Trader Joe of the Neutral Zone
by Calculonius
Summary: Trader Joe goes Boldly where no merchant has gone before - the Romulan Neutral Zone. He sets up shop and tries to prosper in dangerous circumstances and despite every sort of opposition.
1. Chapter 1

This story is based on the Star Fleet Battles version of Star Trek - which means they took the original series, both live-action and animated, assumed the USS Enterprise was a heavy cruiser & took it from there to make up entire fleet structures, including light cruisers, destroyers, frigates, dreadnoughts, carriers of all sizes & so on, for each race in that series. They gave meticulous detail to each ship and system so you could do battles between them.

It's a great game if you have a few days to read the rules and a few hours to play each game.

It's a balanced game too, even though it may not seem that way here sometimes.

Each battle in the story is according to the SFB rules - given the forces specified and the choices made (which are all reasonable choices), the results are as dictated by the game rules, assuming any dice rolls gave average results.

Since the game was created before the Next Generation and other follow on series', it has no Cardassians, Ferengi, Borg etc.

Star Fleet Battles is all about ships and combat between them. For my ship, I wanted a Battlestation. It's a small base. And it, like other bases, comes with fighters, pseudo-fighters (which are bigger than fighters and more capable - think PT boats of space), "modules" (plug-in modules or pods, usually about half of these are cargo & half fighter bays, but can include troops, extra weapons, extra power, or hookups for pseudo-fighters), 1-2 police frigates and a destroyer to guard them.

SFBTJ

Trader Joe of the Neutral Zone

Captains Log, Stardate...

nah, fooey on that. I ain't in the military anymore and I'm fed up with all the bureaucratic nonsense there. I'm sure as anything not going to bother with it in this Log.

And I ain't gonna enter boring day-to-day details neither. Nobody wants to read entries like "Monday, I had breakfast & went to work as usual, worked on stuff all day which would sound trivial, stupid, or incomprehensible unless you worked in the same field, then went home & spent the evening relaxing with friends". That's garbage. Information content: null. I'm just gonna enter Events - stuff that happens that's worth noting. And since it's a very unlucky person that has many of those happening to him, I don't expect to put much here.

I've been lucky.

Let me catch you up to speed.

I'm Trader Joe of the Neutral Zone, the third of that name.

See, a bunch of years ago, my Grandpaw was a successful trader in the Federation (that's the United Federation of Planets to you nitpicky types, or "the feds" to those of us of a more casual persuasion).

Grandpaw had a good business he'd built up over the years. Now most of you will think that means a small fleet & sure, he had that. Not so small neither: he had 7 small freighters and 5 large freighters (really imaginative naming 'eh? Darn bureaucrats & their soulless approach to everything... But I digress). Anyway, the real core of a good business is not your equipment. Sure that's important, but the real core is harder to nail down. It includes your contacts, the routes & the agreements you've worked out, your business practices &, very importantly, your people - their loyalty, work ethic & training and...

Nevermind. This isn't a manual on how to make a successful business. My point is that Grandpaw had one. A very successful one. And he had a bad habit. Well, sorta bad. We always told him "the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math", but he never listened. He said it gave him a thrill & as long as he was careful to just play a little ... (which is almost like saying "I'll be careful not to fall after I've stepped off the cliff" - most folks go overboard once they start gambling, but anyway...). But didn't he have the last laugh (after he got over the shock of actually winning - he never really expected to) when he won one of the biggest jackpots ever to that date.

Well, he got tons of advice on how to spend it - mostly bad, some really bad. He thought it over lots and eventually made a decision that most folks said was the worst he ever made.

But Grandpaw was 'crazy like a fox', as they say.

He sold his shipping company lock stock and barrel - though not the people of course - can't sell them, as slavery is illegal. They can make their own choices &, funny, once they learned what the options were, most of them chose to go to work for Grandpaw in his new business, since he'd always treated them right. See, some folks think they can get ahead by squeezing all they can out of folks. You have to be plumb ignorant to believe that, but many do. Just look and see how that has always worked out - poorly at best & usually disastrously. It's about as sensible as thinking that, since your liver grows back, you can stay alive by eating your own liver.

But anyway, I was getting to the new business Grandpaw started. See, he couldn't do another shipping company in the Federation, since part of the deal with selling his old one was not to compete with the buyers. That's standard - they want to have actually bought something, not to have you effectively take it away by starting a whole new one just like it & driving them out of business.

Anyway, he didn't want to restart the same business - those darn feds are so full of bureaucracy & so inflexible about it, he about had fits over it.

See, he lost shipments &, even whole ships, to pirates & he positively Hated that. He wanted to arm his ships to stop it, but the feds wouldn't let him - rules were too strict about what he could have & what he couldn't. The rules said he could only put one piddly little Phaser 3 on each ship. For you non-military types, I'll explain that. See, the best Phaser you can put on a ship (a mobile ship anyway, not a base) is a Phaser 1. That'll put the hurt on the enemy, but only out so far (it drops off fast after range 8, as we used to say. See, we could talk about tens of thousands of kilometers in range & megajoules of energy delivered as far as damage, but it was so much easier to simplify that, that it caught on. So most folks talk about range 1 & 2 etc, being the distances at which various weapons drop significantly in effectiveness, and about 10 or 20 'damage points' etc, instead of getting bogged down in scientific details that are, for the most part, completely academic anyway. The energy it takes to blow up a Phaser is one point & everything scales from there. Usually your bridge takes 2-3 points to blow up completely, unless you have a really small ship.).

But back to the point, a Phaser 2 is weaker than a Phaser 1, and is for ships that haven't got enough bracing to handle the shock of firing a Phaser 1 (or for those who want to save money). A Phaser 3 is weaker yet & pretty much only good for shooting down drones (that's missiles for you non-military types). It can hurt other stuff, sure, but it takes a lot of nibbling away with a Phaser 3 to get anywhere, by which time your average pirate has become annoyed with you & blown your ship to smithereens.

Really, there's no point in mounting just one Phaser 3.

And that bothered Grandpaw about like having ants in your undershorts would bother you.

He'd always wanted to protect his ships well enough that your common pirate was no threat to them - though that excludes Orion Pirates - that's a special group that arms their ships well enough to give naval vessels a serious run for their money. Thank goodness that most pirates are far below that level.

Anyway, Grandpaw had him some long-time crewmates who were real close. They knew each-other real well & were right friendly to the point of doing each-other major favors. They weren't all human neither. Grandpaw employed the best, no matter what race that was. So he had Kzinti Marines (them fellers are tough, and not too hard to get along with once you know the trick to it), and so on. Well he had a Romulan, a Vulcan and a Hydran on his own crew - them's the ones I was talking about as were friends & such.

So he made a deal. Several deals actually. His Hydran, who we affectionately called "Mister Unpronounceable" turned out to be a member of a shipbuilding guild, out to learn how ships are being used before taking a high position in the company from his parent-thing.

So from Mr Unpronounceable, Grandpaw got a deal to have a base built. Not just any base, but a full-on Battlestation with Hangar pods, fighters, pseudofighters and everything (see, pseudofighters is like fighters, only bigger - they're still speedy little bundles of weapons like fighters, 'cept it takes a small crew of a dozen or so crazy adrenaline-junkies to run 'em where a fighter takes just one.)

Now Battlestations are mostly built in big shipyards and towed to where they need to be, so Grandpaw got him a tug too & towed the thing clear across to the other side of the Federation, where he smelled a business opportunity.

See, that's where the Romulan came in. When he wasn't around we called him Sparky 'cause the sparks would fly if he thought you was insulting him. When he was there, we just called him Magnifico - he seemed to like that.

Anyway, Sparky had contacts in the Romulan empire such as could make the right deals with Grandpaw. So Grandpaw ended up with a trading station in the Neutral Zone between the Romulans and the Federation. And that station was armed well enough to laugh at any common pirates & the Orion Pirates too.

So the Neutral Zone is basically a space between empires where neither navy gets to go. But that don't make it useless. No sir, there are some small un-allied worlds there trying to stay beneath the notice of both empires. And those worlds need trade. They need it bad. Now not many traders are willing to risk a place like the neutral zone. See, the one thing pirates like best is a place that is guaranteed to be safe to them & what else is a spot where no navy will go? That's right - safe for pirates who don't like being hunted by navies. Plus, there was a Lot of demand for trade between the 2 empires (don't give me no guff about calling the feds an empire - 6 of one half a dozen of the other, says I), but the profit to be made wasn't worth the risk.

That's where Grandpaw came in. His Battlestation was more than tough enough to handle any pirates. It's Scout sensors could see clear thru the whole Neutral Zone in both directions (he was pretty much in the middle of its width), and His Phaser 4's (that's the base-mounted kind & they pack a mighty whallop), could reach out real far too. Also, he could send fighters or pseudo-fighters or his Tug (which was coincidentally pretty well armed - good old Grandpaw) out to stomp any pirates who were about to mess with his shipping.

And it was, in a way, HIS shipping. Sure he didn't have any of his own freighters (yet), but he had contracts with whole loads of independent shippers and a few large companies. Some dropped off at Grandpaw's base & picked up other loads in pre-arranged deals. Some came to use his base as a big market to buy and sell there. Some stopped in for repairs and upgrades to their ships. Some just planned their routes to pass close by, so they could get help if attacked - and they paid for that protection in advance, kinda like insurance.

And Grandpaw raked in the dough.

'least until he died.

And he died a happy man - he'd achieved his dream & ran it for 20 years. And he had great success.

Well, one of his dreams anyway.

The other was to have his own planet. See, he was a sneaky one - he filed him a mining claim on a rocky planet of the right size & composition. It was the right distance from its sun too. But it was cold and had no life on it, 'cause it had no water or air. Well, he took care of that. He had the tug go find comets of the right composition, and tow 'em so they'd smack into the planet.

See, most ships can tow other ships, but for really big stuff like comets and bases, you need a dedicated tug, which almost nobody builds 'cause regular ships fill most towing needs. About the only folks that build dedicated tugs are navies & navies arm everything they build & then have bureaucracy and rules for what they can do: "Maintaining Readiness" & such like. Basically it means nobody bothers towing comets around - regular folks can't & navies won't let themselves, anymore than they'd let you skydive for fun from their shuttles.

Sure, it's crude, & there's lots better ways to terraform a planet. But, given enough time, this will do it cheaply. His only cost was a little fuel for the tug, and the price of a couple cargoes of the right lichens and algaes, which he had his own shuttles spread over the planet.

He planned for the long term, did old Grandpaw. He figured he'd probably never see the terraforming done, but he wanted his descendants, at least, to have their own planet.

Then, just in case, he did the same to a second planet.

He has a weird sense of humor and a taste for really old stories, so he called 'em Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

The weather on a planet gets a bit rowdy after being hit with a few huge comets. Stays that way a while too - years and years. But it's great for spreading algae, lichen etc all over the place - just one high-altitude pass from a shuttle dropping those & they'll end up all over the planet. Now you may be thinking algae and lichen don't sound like your first choice of plants to have around. But they do great at modifying the atmosphere & turning rocks into dirt, After a couple decades of that it's ready for grass & maybe trees & such.

Anyway, there weren't 'done cooking' yet, as he used to like to say. Not like cooking was what they were really doing, but I think you get the idea. He always planned that we'd set up shop there when they were ready...

But anyway, when Grandpaw died, Paw took over as Trader Joe. Mostly, he had a nice quiet time of trading, and making loads of money doing so too. See the pirates had made their try and mostly given up back when Grandpaw first started.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that.

See, when the Battlestation (he called it Oz for some strange reason) first got into place & they got the positional stabilizers set up (you can't fire Phaser 4's without those & it takes a couple hours to engage them), they were just getting settled in when the first pirate arrived. It was an Orion pirate too, in a Heavy Cruiser no less (they call it a Battle Raider, but it's basically a Heavy Cruiser). See, they'd been top dogs in the area & wanted to keep on being in charge. The pirates did what they liked, told everyone else what to do & what not to & extorted money from them all, under various excuses. They killed whoever got in the way & intimidated the rest. So in other words, they were effectively the local government. Sure, nobody voted for them, but that isn't how it's done in most governments neither is it? They figured that 'might made right' & that left them in charge. Maybe so, but by their own way of thinkin', that left Grandpaw in charge once he got there - if only guns have votes, then he won since he had the most & biggest guns.

Anyway, This Orion cruiser showed up & threatened Grandpaw. If you ever knew my Grandpaw you'd know better than to threaten him. He told them what he was going to do to them, but they thought he was bluffing. Seems like the pirates thought nobody could afford to both buy, and arm, a Battlestation. Seems kinda backwards, 'cause they afford exactly that, at least as far as getting and arming top of the line ships. They didn't know economics - the Battlestation actually cost less than Grandpaw's fleet of freighters had, all told, though outfitting it cost almost as much again...

Anyway, they made threats & demands until Grandpaw got tired of them, then he gave them a few seconds to shut up & leave, or get blown out of space. They were too fond of flapping their lips, and too convinced we were bluffing - that we couldn't really be armed that well, & so they died. Those Phaser 4's chewed them up & spat them out in no time. Even though the Orions are top notch as far as pirates go, and this was one of their biggest ships, they barely even scratched us - a mere 8 damage points to one of our shields (which take 45 each to beat down). Fixing that was a small matter of resetting some breakers & replacing a few capacitors.

Our tug went out & collected the wreckage which was what's left of them. We sold it for salvage.

For some reason he never explained, just before he opened fire on them, Grandpaw said to the pirates, in a funny voice "Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational Battlestation!" He laughed and laughed about that later. We never did understand his sense of humor.

You'd think they learned their lesson. But no, they'd had a good thing going for a long time & they didn't want anybody messing it up. So they tried again.

By this time business was picking up - freighter captains were getting the idea that it really was safe to trade here now & so a few were coming in & more daily.

Anyway, one of these freighters that came in turned out not to be a freighter, it was a Q-ship run by Orions. See, a Q-ship is a freighter that has had a lot of its cargo space removed & replaced with weapons & such like, but still looks like a freighter. They have about enough weapons to defend against most non-Orion pirates and even some naval frigates, if they get lucky. Their whole point is to look like a normal innocent freighter until they attack. Lots of pirates use 'em because nobody runs from a freighter.

Anyway, this Q-ship came on in to dock just like any freighter, but claimed their crew was so desperate for shore leave they couldn't wait for the ship itself to dock & so they hurried ahead in the shuttles. We're careful about that kind of thing now. But these 3 shuttles get close to the station with the Q-ship not far behind & suddenly they all launch drones (they call that kind of shuttle a scatter pack & it can only fire once but is pretty good at getting some hurt in on the enemy). Now this is bad, since, back in those days, we figured we could always see a fight coming in plenty of time due to those amazing scout sensors on the base, so we didn't keep our weapons warmed up. Phasers don't just fire with no warning like Disruptors or Fusion Beams do. Phasers take just a moment to warm up. It ain't much, but it was enough so we couldn't just shoot down those drones. Normally we have enough Phaser firepower to shoot down more drones than a small fleet could launch (except a Kzinti fleet - those boys are devoted to drones & actually pack enough to do some good. Most ships only have enough drone launchers to give the enemy's drone defenses something to do - waste of time if you ask me).

Anyway, here we are with 22 drones coming our way from point blank range. That's enough to beat down our shield to do serious damage to us - probably even cripple us.

But Grandpaw didn't employ any slackers. His crew didn't have to stop and wonder what to do - they knew what they had at their disposal without having to stare into space slack-jawed thinking about it. Those Scout sensors on the base can do a bunch of things, including jamming drones so they lose lock-on. They did that & took out 6.

Now every little bit helps, but were were still looking at major damage if we didn't have any other tricks to play.

But Grandpaw was ... well, Grandpaw. He always had another card up his sleeve, so to speak.

See, the Battlestations the Hydrans build comes with a Hellbore, which is a nice weapon, and a Fusion Beam, which is only nice sometimes. If you can get your enemy to range 2 or less, the Fusion beam can tear him up good. But most folks know that & so have plenty of motivation to stay further away, and usually no trouble doing so. Grandpaw had been in the military too, at one point & had a great interest in weapons. Anyway, instead of the Fusion Beam, he wanted something that'd give us a capability we didn't have. Now normally he was against using drones, since each one you fire costs money, and since you can rarely fire enough to get in a hit. Sure, 100% of them hit if the enemy does nothing about it, but there are so many things they can do to stop drones that, for the most part, only the Kzinti get any hits. Still, even though our big Phaser 4's can reach out two and a half times further than most weapons can, there is one thing that can reach further yet - a drone. And drones are always ready too. And they do pretty good damage. So Grandpaw had gotten one drone launcher & loaded it with a bunch of big double-sized drones. Some were set up for antiship work, since those double-sized ones pack a whallop - 24 points at once if it hits. And while getting hits is hard, it can be done if you sneak in a shot when the enemy is distracted. Anyway, the rest were multi-warhead jobs for taking down fighters, Pseudo-fighters, or, in this case, other drones.

So they fired a multi-warhead job & it took out 5 more incoming drones.

Then, since there wasn't time for any other countermeasures, they reinforced the shield as much as they could (basically you dump into it all the energy you can spare, at the right moment, to temporarily strengthen it) and braced for impact.

Well it's a good job their drones weren't double-size, or we'd have a bad time of it. Of course if they had been, there'd have been half as many, so maybe not.

But as it was, even with regular-size drones, we took enough damage to almost take down our shield - it only had 3 points left.

But just as we looked up from that & our Phasers came on-line, 4 of the incoming 'freighters' called us up and demanded surrender, while at the same time firing Disruptors and Phasers at us to prove they meant it. Luckily they faced a different shield than the one that was almost down - the station rotates & they hadn't taken that into account. From that far out, they didn't do enough to cause us immediate porblems.

Obviously, these were Orion Q-ships too. They'd figured they'd lose the ship close in (and they certainly did) but do enough damage from the surprise attack that we'd have to surrender.

Well we, that is, Grandpaw & his team, blasted them all to flinders. He let his Phaser-G's take out the Q-ship close in (I didn't mention those, did I? Well, it's a Phaser that fires 4 times as a Phaser 3 real quick-like. They're useless at any range, but absolutely shred things up close. They're real good at stopping drones too.) Anyway he about vaporized the one close in with Phaser-G (G for Gatling), and busted up the other 4 with Phaser 4's. Sure, they turned & tried to run when they saw we weren't crippled, but Q-ships don't move much faster than freighters & the Phasers had no trouble with them.

Also, we'd scrambled our fighters. They made it halfway to the Q-ships before there was nothing left to shoot.

Since then, Grandpaw got more serious about pilot training and readiness. While that costs money, it costs more to not have them when you need them, or to lose them to mistakes that could have been avoided. A fighter that is piloted poorly, is just a target.

So we have good pilots now.

But back to the story.

We salvaged those wrecks too, including one that wasn't wrecked up too bad. Then used the bits of the others, plus some new parts, to repair it and get it running again, good as new. See, the base has plenty of repair capacity and even some ability to build new ships, as long as they aren't too big. So Grandpaw repaired it and put it into service as a sort of self-escorting Large Freighter. It was Kzinti-built, so you'd have thought he'd name it something having to do with cats, right? Nah, he named it Sopwith Camel for some reason (he thought it was funny - we don't know why). It didn't have as much cargo space as a large freighter anymore, but it had enough weapons to give any pirate but an Orion plenty of reasons to go away and leave it alone.

What's more, it had 4 fighter bays on it (those are like shuttle bays but include stuff for rearming weapons & such). They had left their fighters behind to bring shuttles instead, so they could get more boarding parties (that's troops) aboard faster. One of those shuttles we could even repair, and did. It always helps to have spares.

See, there are three ways to board a ship - transporters, shuttles, or airlock-to-airlock docking. With transporters or shuttles, you get just a few boarding parties over at a time - few enough to be easily defeated before reinforcements can arrive. Also transporters require the shields to be down &, unless you shoot them down, they are always up when there is any threat at all, or even uncertainty. And shuttles cost money & can be shot down, even by a piddly little Phaser 3 & even by a captain that has no real hope but wants to stick a finger in your eye before he goes down. So for any serious boarding actions, you pull one ship up to the other, connect your airlock to theirs, lock it in, open both airlocks and rush across as many troops as you can. Though for that you have to get right up to them, and at least with transporters or shuttles you can board from a distance.

Warships don't generally get captured, since they can fight you off, or run away, or at least maneuver to avoid being docked with. But, as a rule, nobody fears a freighter & so they don't mind docking with it to take it over. It's the surest way. We benefit from that a lot.

Anyway, we have the best fighters there are, in my opinion. They're Hydran Stinger 2's mostly & carry Gatling Phasers and Fusion Beams. They can't do much beyond range 2, but they're fast and nimble enough they have no problem getting to range 2. And at range 1 or less, they will absolutely shred things. One volley from a Stinger 2 inside of range 1 averages 35 points of damage - enough to drop the front shield (the thickest one) of a heavy cruiser. And that's just from one Stinger-2. The captain that lets a few of them in close is a dead captain. Anyway, we loaded 4 of those into the Sopwith Camel & any hostile that gets in close (like, say, a pirate wanting to board her) is in for a world of hurt.

But the evidence that they wanted to board us concerned Grandpaw, since that was one of the few ways they had much chance of significantly bothering us. Now Grandpaw had always had big crews, since he liked people & had a penchant for offering jobs to folks who were down on their luck. Anyway, even though we had more trained boarding parties on our ships than standard, Grandpaw figured that more was better, just in case. So on each of our ships he built a couple barracks into some of their cargo spaces & recruited folks to fill them (mostly Kzinti and Gorns, who are good at fighting, but anybody skilled enough was welcome).

But he had only started that before the next event happened.

You'd think that most folks would give up after losing that much, right?

Nah. Not these guys. Not yet anyway. The Orions were apparently really bent out of shape about not being able to push us around.

Next thing we knew, one of the Large Freighters that docked to tranship cargo didn't really want to transship cargo. Nope, they wanted to take all our cargo and our base too. The moment they docked, they rushed in tons of troops to try to capture the base. They had way more troops than normal too. Once things settled, we learned that they were sorta a Q-Ship too. See, a small freighter is basically a cargo pod with engines, a bridge (that's ship controls if you didn't know), & some crew quarters. A large freighter is the same, but 2 cargo pods instead of one. These cargo pods are pretty standard & most tugs can attach one or two. But, navies being what they are, it wasn't long before admirals decided that fleet tugs needed to be able to help fight on occasion (or, better than they already could, at least). So they designed up some other kinds of pods, including battle pods which add a bunch of weapons power systems & some shields, carrier pods that have fighter bays and support for them, and troop transport pods. This freighter had been built to look like a regular freighter, kinda like a Q-ship. But it never had had cargo pods. Instead it had a troop transport pod and a battle pod. This makes it tougher than a Q-ship & just as sneaky. Well, their troops rushed in & if we hadn't had more trained troops than normal, we'd have lost the station. As it was, it was a near thing. Grandpaw got those barracks done in a hurry after that. That gave us a Lot more troops.

With a boarding action like this, one side or the other ends up with both ships. Grandpaw named the new ship Spad. We'll never understand his sense of humor.

Now Spad couldn't haul much cargo, but she could fly along with real freighters and keep them safe without looking like they were safe, so she made wonderful pirate bait. A few times pirates gave her the usual "surrender and prepare to be boarded" bit & she'd meekly comply, then board them back. We sold those formerly-pirate vessels.

For some reason, after that attack, folks kinda gave up on actually hurting our Battlestation, with ships anyway - more on that in a sec.

Now crewing the new vessels, Spad and Sopwith Camel, turned out not to be a problem at all.

One of those pirate vessels was hauling slaves to market when it decided it wanted to capture Spad (which was operating at the time with a skeleton crew, plus plenty of troops).

Once the dust from that had settled, Grandpaw offered jobs to any of the freed slaves that wanted jobs. Many accepted. Of those that didn't, some stayed in touch & ended up being useful contacts.

For new crews, Grandpaw always chose a core crew from existing crews, so he knew he could rely on them. Then he filled out the rest with new folks - in this case, with freed slaves in training. It worked out well. No surprise there - Grandpaw treated folks right. Even those without the talent to be ship crew got to keep a job of some sort - something they could do, even if it was just cargo-handler.

Of course, any that turned out not to be trustworthy got fired quick.

Grandpaw lucked out there - his pal and crewmate Salik (that's the Vulcan I mentioned) had trained himself to be able to detect lies & deception - he could feel it from a distance like one of his famous relatives could feel emotional pain. Turns out none of the major problems - theft, graft, murder etc, are possible without being able to lie about it (to yourself to work up to doing it, & to others to hide it). Such folks got sent away just for the intent to commit crimes. Those who actually committed any were punished for it.

We had a pretty peaceful community on our base, we did.

But those Orions are nothing if not determined. And Evil. And ... nevermind. They didn't give up. They just changed tactics.

Next they sent in agents to try to sabotage us internally. Some would arrive as traders, some looking for jobs and so on. The first one tried to blow up one of our reactors in hopes it'd take out the whole station. Luckily he wasn't very competent. Seems your suicidal types aren't motivated to learn proper engineering. Not this one at least. Anyway, he took out himself and damaged the plant. After that, we got careful about checking over everybody on station. Salik was good at that. No more folks with bad intentions got aboard.

But we weren't quite done with agents yet. The Orions really wanted to tear us apart internally. So they found a guy who was upset at not being promoted (even though his skills didn't justify promotion) and they bribed him. He started spreading divisive rumors. We stopped that soon enough. Just walk everybody past Salik - he points to some to talk to more extensively & Salik and the guys who operate our electronic lie detectors have a chat with them (See, Salik won't be around forever, so we have our guys hone their skills on the lie detectors by having them do their best & then having Salik confirm or contest the accuracy. Our guys are getting pretty good).

Those Orions gave up after a while & stopped trying. Or seemed to. We stay on our guard just in case.

Well, anyway, that catches us up to where Paw took over, as I mentioned.

Things went pretty smoothly then too, though Paw had some quirks. See, once, early on, he'd had a bad experience - the ship he was serving on (with somebody else's shipping company so he could broaden his experience), had engine failure & didn't have the parts to fix it. They should have, but they didn't. So, they coasted along for weeks, tinkering with it, before somebody found them & towed them to port.

After that Paw was kinda fixated on always having plenty of spare parts around, of all types, for everything. And we had the money to buy 'em.

Some of the parts he bought were not spare at all. Our Hydran-built tug, (Grandpaw had named it Stumpy) had not had a pod, though it had room for one. So Paw bought one & had it delivered. It was a CV pod (they call 'em pallets, but I say they're pods of a slightly different shape, but still pods), which means it can operate as a medium carrier (an entire squadron of 12 fighters in the pod). Now, being Hydran built, it could already carry a couple fighters - the Hydrans are like that. They wouldn't build a grocery store unless it could launch a couple fighters. Well, ok, not exactly that bad, but you get the idea. Anyway, Paw liked how that worked & so bought a selection of other pods from the Hydrans too. It's easy to swap them around & not hard to store the ones you aren't currently using.

Paw was a tinkerer too. He liked to see what would work with what.

While he was swapping pods on the tug, the pods (modules technically, but again, basically pods of a slightly different shape) on the Battlestation caught his eye.

He saw that the Hangar modules and cargo modules on the base looked like they could, with a little adaptation, be swapped out for the Hydran-built pallets, which had more useful systems inside. Now, our base could build whole ships (if small ones), and repair just about anything, given parts, so doing those modifications turned out to be pretty simple.

So when Paw got done, the base could operate three times as many fighters as before, in 3 CV pods (one squadron of 12 in each pod), and had more of certain other systems too, including another flotilla and a half of Pseudo-Fighters (A PF flotilla is 6), once Paw added docking clamps for those (called Mech links) to all available spots. Another benefit was that Hydrans, liking fighters as they do, had come up with a better system to launch a bunch of them at once. Most folks have to open the shuttle bay doors & send out fighters or shuttles one at a time. Hydrans include launch tubes in their fighter bays, so you can launch lots of fighters all at once. That can come in real handy.

Paw didn't exactly buy more fighters. See, Grandpaw had negotiated a contract where we could 'license build' all the Hydran fighters and pseudo-fighters we use. We only had to buy the weapons systems from the Hydrans (they hold that technology pretty close - nobody gets to know how to build them, though they sell finished copies to some they think they can trust, like the Feds, Lyran Democratic Republic, and us). So we built us the extra fighters we needed. Fighters aren't cheap, but business was booming, and it's better to be prepared than to be dead. While the Orion pirates had decided that taking us out wasn't worth the cost, there are always other threats. Many small ship captains in the Neutral Zone (and other places when they could get away with it) would add a couple weapons to their freighters and do a little piracy when opportunity presented itself.

One of the most interesting things that happened while Paw ran Oz (that's our base, remember) was that he stumbled across a slaving ring. See, criminals are often pretty stupid. They often think that they're better or sneakier than anyone else & so nobody can see thru them & I guess you get kinda blinded by that kind of thinking. Whatever. Anyway, some of these fools tried to use our base as a slave transshipment point. They knew that we didn't allow that kind of thing, but, of course, they figured they were sneaky enough to get away with it. They were wrong. So Paw found out, from them, all about their operation. They didn't want to tell, but some of our Kzinti and Gorn troops found ways to motivate them. We didn't ask how.

So it was like this - pirates do what they do - raid & pillage & capture ships where they can. And being the sorts they are, they mostly don't like to let any source of profit slip away. So any crews from ships they took, any folks they could capture in raids, and so on, they usually sold as slaves. This outfit that we'd stumbled on to, bought them cheap from pirates & then re-sold them to buyers - often in the Romulan and Klingon empires where it isn't even illegal. That simplified things for them.

To save themselves some money, they were looking for a new place to transship from.

See, Pirates ain't very trusting types in any case, and especially not when they're of 2 different races that have hated each-other for a long time. So the ones raiding in Romulan space and taking slaves there had set up one depot on an out-of the way asteroid in the neutral zone & the ones raiding in Human space had set up a separate one just like it, towards the other edge of the Neutral Zone. That way they didn't have to deal with each other & risk fighting among themselves. Then those who only dealt in trading slaves (they turned out to be Klingons) would stop by each base in turn to collect slaves & go sell them. But maintaining 2 bases cut into their profit margins more than they'd like, so they figured maybe it'd be cheaper to bribe us & use our base while we looked the other way. That way they wouldn't have to maintain any bases.

Well, as it turned out, they aren't paying to maintain any bases anymore.

We went all-in on this one. Stumpy got sent to one of their asteroid bases & both Spad and Sopwith Camel went to the other, all carrying as many of those lovely Hydran Fighters as they could.

Pirates is stupid. They didn't even have any base defenses - wanted to save that expense too. They figured on "security through obscurity" - nobody went to those out-of-the-way spots in the Neutral Zone & even if they did, how would they find one asteroid among many. They'd need Scout sensors and plenty of time & had no reason to look. But we had the coordinates & waltzed right up to 'em. I think our Kzinti boarding parties enjoyed taking down the slavers we found there. Those Kzintis have a different way of thinking on lots of things, but they'd been around us long enough to hate slavers.

Anyway, we took both bases, but didn't ship any slaves away to freedom yet. We didn't have the space for it just then. Rather, Stumpy and Sopwith Camel hid, one at each base, while Spad flew from one to the other and back again. The idea was to catch any pirates arriving at either or in transit in-between.

Did I mention Pirates is stupid? The ship we caught traveling in-between didn't even wonder why there was a freighter on their same route - they just gave the usual "heave-to and prepare to be boarded" speech. Well, Spad did, but it was the pirates who were boarded. We captured the ship & freed the slaves. The ship was just a Large Freighter with a couple extra Disruptors poorly mounted on it. I mean really poorly. It probably never fired them together, or it wouldn't have survived long enough for us to capture it.

Anyway, It had extra capacity, so we used it to ship the freed slaves to where they wanted to go.

Those who had no place to go (and who wanted to live as quiet farmers anyway), we sent to either Solos or Refuge. Those are the 2 minor planets closest to us in the Neutral Zone. We trade with them a lot. Both were colonized by folks running away from it all. They're mostly farms & some villages. Solos is Romulan and Refuge is Human. There had been a third planet, Qellar, in the Neutral Zone near here, with both Human and Romulan colonists on it. They didn't start out well & never got over it. It seems that old hatreds and rivalries die hard. They fought. And that gave them more reason to fight. Did you know that Plasma Torpedoes do more damage than old-fashioned Nuclear Missiles? Yup. Qellar's villages are smoking holes now. Nobody lives there anymore.

Anyway, after dropping folks off there, The newly captured ship (Paw said such a sorry vessel didn't deserve a name yet), headed thru Federation space (dropping off the rest of the former slaves along the way) to Hydran space, where she could get fixed up and get a proper conversion to being a Q-ship. We were discovering that we liked having self-escorting ships around for more trading and special jobs as needed.

We sent it off to be rebuilt by Hydrans for 2 reasons - mainly 'cause we don't have the blueprints & they do. That's reason enough, of course. But also our secondary business is booming. We repair, upgrade, and even maintain ships for folks & that's keeping our repair bays full.

So that one got converted and we bought another they had one hand while we were at it. They actually had a couple other secondhand ones they had acquired one way or another, which they didn't want so were selling cheap. We bought a Kzinti-built one, since those compete with Hydran built ones for the best type of Q-ship (the Kzinti Q-ships have more fighters).

See, Hydran Q-ships are possibly the meanest around. That's 'cause they look normal until they choose not to, like all Q-ships, so someone intent on boarding gets to close range. Very close range. Hydran weapons do best at close range. Most folks know that & so make sure to fight Hydran Navy ships at a distance, where they're really weak. But they don't know to stay away from a Q ship until it's too late. The Large Hydran Q-ship has 4 Fusion Beams, 2 Gatling Phasers & a pair of fighters. On an average volley inside range 1, not counting the fighters, that's 71 damage points - enough to bust through a Heavy Cruiser's front shield and seriously mess it up such that a 2nd volley would probably kill it (and that's without overloading the Fusion beams, which only costs a little energy and some wear-and-tear, so who wouldn't?). That's in a whole different class than most Q-ships, which are armed about as well as Frigates & would just get laughed at by Heavy Cruisers.

But I almost forgot about Stumpy. Remember it was back at the slaver asteroid base (like Sopwith Camel at the other asteroid, though nothing happened there). Well Stumpy wasn't there long before a slaver came to pick up slaves. Now Stumpy is a good ship, But this was a full-on Orion Slaver & outgunned us, not counting our fighters. And those Orions are careful about procedures & so on - that's how they do so well compared to other pirates. So they issued a call sign & nobody knew a countersign. They didn't wait around for one hardly at all neither - they took off running real quick. But they were close enough we could still singe their tails real good before the fighters caught up to them and blew them away. Poor Stumpy took some damage, and a couple fighters got crippled (I did mention Orions are good, didn't I), but it was nothing we couldn't repair and more importantly we didn't lose any people.

We scrapped the 2 slaver bases. They were little more than buildings with life-support, and nobody wanted to use those buildings except as raw material.

Then we blew up the asteroids they had been on.

When the new Q-ships came back from the Hydrans, Paw named the Kzinti-built one Albatross and the Hydran one Fokker. Seems Grandpaw had let him in on the joke, whatever it was.

Paw had ordered Fokker with one change - normally they come with one shuttle added over what the basic Freighter has. Paw had them change that just a little into a fighter bay. Fighter bays are basically the same as shuttle bays but for ready racks for weapons & a deck crew to load those.

See, Freighters and Q-ships are slow, but having even one fighter (which are fast in case you hadn't guessed) helps with that a lot. And the more fighters the better.

While he was tinkering with things, Paw also made some other weapons changes. Remember how I was saying that drones are only good if you fire enough to swamp the enemy defenses? I'm not the only one who noticed that. Paw had been thinking about it too. So he made some changes to the Battlestation too. See, he was thinking that Battlestations can't go to where the fighting is, like ships can, so longer weapon ranges would be nice. Now nothing reaches out further than Phaser 4's. Nothing but drones that is. And we had all these Phaser 3's we didn't need, since our Gatling Phasers covered that need. So he swapped out all the Phaser 3's for Drone Launchers, and while he was at it he swapped the Hellbore out too, for 2 more Phaser 4's. Normally you couldn't do that, what with bracing requirements and so on, But he pointed out that in swapping out the Fusion Beam (which needs good bracing just like a Hellbore or a Phaser 4) for a drone (which doesn't need nearly as much), it all worked out even. We even saved power for other things.

And another thing the whole slaver business brought to his attention was that Spad and Sopwith Camel could be better armed. See, in reviewing the fight Stumpy had, we realized it could have gone poorly for either of the other 2. So Paw swapped some weapons on them too (he was a tinkerer - he felt confident swapping weapons around, but more complicated stuff he left to professionals). So for Sopwith Camel he swapped out the Phaser 3's and Anti-drone system for Drone launchers. That made 6 launchers - enough to get through defenses, depending on whose defenses. And it gave great range too.

While he was at it, he did the same for Albatross too.

Then for Spad he swapped out 4 Phaser 3's and an anti-drone for 3 drone launchers and 2 Gatling Phasers. And he turned the shuttle bay into a fighter bay.

It took some cycles of tinker, test, fix, repeat, before it all worked as it should, but in the end both ships were much more capable.

Now Paw wasn't a fan of having ships be idle. An idle ship is a big hole you throw money into. It costs for maintenance, fuel, salaries & so on. So he made sure all of our ships were as busy as he could make 'em.

Like I said before, the whole neutral zone is a haven for pirates, since navies don't go there. Well, we treated it like a road - traveling up & down its length for a good ways either direction taking advantage of all kinds of trade opportunities (and whacking more than a few pirates while were at it). Our Q-ships (that's Sopwith Camel, Albatross, and Fokker), drove along it by themselves delivering cargoes wherever needed and putting some fear into pirates, who never could tell whether they were looking at a simple freighter or a Q-ship.

Spad could carry very little cargo, but could go places where almost anything would fear to go - all those drones could turn targets inside-out fast. So she went to dangerous spots, and also flew with convoys sometimes so they'd have an armed escort that didn't look like an escort.

See, both empires, the Feds and the Romulans, have a string of Battlestations along the whole border, just in range to see each other. There was a lot of trade opportunity there, flying from one side's base to the other, treating them as trading posts, which those governments allow (almost nobody went further into Romulan space than that - that was chancy at best), but few were willing to cross the neutral zone to do it. Too many got pirated in the attempt.

Until we came along that is. The whole area around our base was safe for traders to fly through. And Spad and Stumpy took convoys across in other areas. We even expanded the safe zone by sending out regular patrols of pseudo-fighter flotillas (that'd be 5 normal pseudo-fighters and one scout version, so they could see targets before being seen).

The fighters at base don't patrol much, not having much range. They rotate through being at the base or on the ships. On the ships, they get more experience and get the lions share of any fighting. The base often keeps a couple flying nearby to discourage anybody from trying anything.

So all the ships were busy and making good incomes, including some additional income from taking down the occasional pirate. We sold those - the wrecks if we had to fight, or the whole ships if they boarded.

In fact we made such good money at that, that Paw went and bought 4 more Hydran Q-ships.

Paw didn't like to dig into savings - said there was no protection against disasters and emergencies better than a fat bank account (though we didn't actually keep a bank account - he said money that's money only because the government said so is a bad bet - governments come & go and change their minds when they feel like it. No, our 'bank account' was a stockpile of inherently valuable trading commodities kept safe - at our base). But he had certain spending levels he'd go to and for these, he was willing to spend.

The Q-Ships made us a ton of money. They wouldn't have if we traded in safe zones - regular freighters carry more cargo. So for the same fuel, salary & maintenance expenses, you make more. But for dangerous areas, like we were in, there was nothing better.

The 4 new ships he named Nieuport, Sopwith Pup, Bleriot, and Kondor, still following along Grandpaw's naming scheme.

They went right into service along with the rest.

Now, Grandpaw never considered getting permits in the Federation to operate Q-ships. Said it was too expensive and he should not need a permit. But we're doing well enough we went ahead and got permits. That lets us take cargoes all the way to Federation endpoints, which pays more than dropping them off partway, for others to pick up and take on.

Well we tried Spad at carrying paying passengers, since she has a good bit of capacity there. Sure, it paid nicely, but it was hard on the crews. See, folks in general have a positive genius for making trouble. Passengers can come up with endless ways to delay you, make demands for special considerations of all types, treat your crew like servants (bad servants at that – constantly implying that things were not up to their standards, as if our guys were waiters that had just brought them cold soup with insects floating in it). Not that our standards were bad – we run tight ships. But that many folks have this bad habit of wanting to feel like kings & thinking they can achieve that by treating others as servants – as if the more demands they can make, the more special they are. Well, we figured the money wasn't worth it – we value our crews' well-being, including keeping their frustration levels low (or at least no higher than necessary). So we only run passengers around occasionally & mostly use Spad like a warship or heavily-armed carrier of special cargoes.

Anyway, things were booming, so Paw went back to some tinkering. See, it bothered him that our pseudo-fighters were helpless at long range.

So he looked long & hard over Grandpaw's weapons catalogs & decided on a combination: He swapped out both Phaser 2's for Gatling Phasers, which have only slightly less range than Phaser 2's but a lot more damage output potential. And then he went a little weird and swapped both Fusion beams for Plasma Torpedo Launchers Type F - the full kind that ships and other PF's carry, not the combination stasis box & launcher that fighters use (fighters with those can't reload themselves, but just fire the one Torpedo they have stored).

Neither weapon took more power to run, overall, than what he swapped out, and the ships already had enough structural bracing to stand firing them. But overall, their firepower went up significantly at all ranges.

Now, Plasma F's are actually one of the better long range weapons.

But better than being longer ranged is this: Plasma Torpedoes give folks something to shoot at other than us: If they're using their Phasers shooting at incoming Plasma Torpedoes, then they aren't using those same Phasers on us.

See Plasma Torpedoes can be weakened by Phaser fire - the containment field fluctuates & lets out some Plasma which spreads out harmlessly & weakens the warhead. If you shoot it enough, you can dissipate the whole thing down to nothing, but that takes a lot of shooting. Still, most folks would rather shoot an incoming Torpedo they know will kill them, rather than fighters they may be able to negotiate with.

And Paw said the unusual weapon combination would keep the enemy guessing - generally if they see a Hydran PF, they know what to expect, but not with ours.

He did that to all our pseudo-fighters, except the 3 scouts. See, the scouts already swap out the 2 Fusion Beams for 2 Scout Sensors, and, for some reason, another transporter. Paw couldn't see any reason to have another transporter, but could see a lot of use in a tractor beam, so he swapped them. Sure, a teeny little pseudo-fighter wouldn't do very well towing big ships. But they could tow other pseudo-fighters or fighters damaged in combat. Or they could tow useful small bits of wreckage that otherwise might float away after a battle. At very minimum that's some refined metal for free & that saves the effort & cost of mining & refining it. Anyway, he did the same Phaser 2 for Gatling swap for the Scout PF's. But he said they had no use for 2 special Scout sensors - that anything they could do with 2, they could do with one. So he swapped the 2nd one back to a heavy weapon - A Plasma F again.

Now this weapons mix isn't perfect - while PF's are speedy, other ships can go just as fast, if you give them time to get up to speed. And Paw worried that an opponent we're chasing could get to medium or long range, hold that range & take out or PF's without us being able to respond, since Plasma Torpedoes lose strength with distance traveled. So, in a stern chase where you can't catch up, Torps aren't the best way to go. Still, they fit our needs better than anything else & we can answer their weaknesses with doctrine - just make it a policy that, unless you can catch 'em quick, don't do stern chases (if they're chasing us it's a different matter - then the Plasmas do fine).

Paw, wanted to upgrade the tug, but that was beyond him, so he sent it of to the Hydrans, where they had a standard upgrade they could do to it (2 actually), including engine upgrades & all sorts of systems. See, they normally did one upgrade for the tug & a different one for the Ranger cruiser which is built on the same hull. Paw paid for both, since that'd get the Phaser 2's swapped out for Phaser 1's. There's just no reason to use Phaser 2 if you can have a Phaser 1, which is superior across the board.

Well, things went along great for a few years, though pirate ships were getting kinda scarce near us. Then Paw saw one more business opportunity. There were mining operations coming & going here & there & they needed protected shipping too.

So Paw got with the Hydrans & got them to rebuild 2 Large Ore Haulers as Q-ships. See, a Large Ore Hauler is just like a Large Freighter, only twice the size. So they just did what they did with a Large Q-ship, only twice as much. Except Paw saw no need for 8 fusion beams. Instead he had them put 4 Fusion and 4 Plasma Torpedoes Type F (the full launchers again, only fighters use the stasis-box stored Torpedoes for those, though the full launchers also have a stasis box). He wanted to give it Disruptors, to give it some long-range ability, but these freighters just don't have the energy to run those and the Fusion beams at the same time. See, Plasma F's, as they're called, can charge up a Torpedo, then store it in a stasis box ready to launch whenever. So the ships can launch stored Torpedoes and also fire Fusion Beams at the same time. Then they need a while to charge up more Torpedoes.

Anyway, these he named Handley Page, and Zeppelin. To be honest, they didn't do as well as he'd hoped. While they keep busy, there just isn't as much money in shipping bulk raw materials, even from dangerous zones. Still, there is always work for them and Paw says it's good to 'diversify our income streams'.

Lastly, Paw finally figured out how to improve our freighters some. See, all our Q-ships are based on Large Freighters (the small ones just don't fight well enough to bother with). And Large Freighters come with a couple sub-par weapons: a Phaser 2 and a Phaser 3. Now for some reason those get replaced with Transporters when the ship gets turned into a Q-ship. But the bracing is still there for weapons. After much tinkering, Paw managed to swap out both extra transporters (leaving only the original one the ship started with) for one Shuttle bay and one Plasma Torpedo Type F to give it a little long-range capacity, and give the enemy something to shoot at besides our ship.

He also fit in a Scout Sensor in Aux Con (that's Auxiliary Control - see freighters already have a bridge and an emergency bridge from which you can control the ship. Aux Con is another copy of the same thing - he figured we could cut into that redundancy a bit: better to see threats coming and avoid them than to be able to take a little more damage before losing control).

And he swapped out the Lab for a tractor beam - who needs laboratories on a freighter – what were they thinking? (nevermind that, it was rhetorical, see navy ships need Labs to help them deal with strange phenomenon and new life forms they may encounter, which is probably why the ship designers included it in a freighter - they were used to including it. But if a freighter encounters that, he's doing something wrong & needs to just leave rather than trying to figure it out.)

But you can always use a tractor beam for small bits of salvage or asteroids you pass (small ones, or shoot off a chunk of a larger one), if nothing else. We'll do laboratory stuff at the base, plus the freighters can use Probe drones (a small lab in a missile that can get close to any target) if they absolutely need to. They carry enough drones in cargo space anyway, to load up in shuttles as scatter packs if there's need, so he just added a couple probe drones to the mix. And while he was at it he swapped all probe launchers on all ships for drone launchers, with some probe drones available. It gives us a bit of an edge in a fight, and still maintains the ability to send out probes, more or less.

Paw also used a little cargo space to put in another Fighter. Sure, cargo space was what paid the bills, but only if it got delivered. Another fighter added a lot of firepower & flexibility & helped our ships survive. The fighters got hit and needed repairs a few times, but we never lost one.

Sometimes folks asked Paw if he was going a bit overboard with all the weaponry. His answer was always the same: "Fair fights are for fools" he would say, "Stack the deck as much in your favor as you can, so you can win & not take too much hurt while doing so. Unfai fights are over quick, which tends to limit the damage you take".

Paw was a clear thinker, he was.

After several good years, Paw passed on peacefully in the hospital from congenital illness.

Then I come into the picture. Hi. I'm Trader Joe of the Neutral Zone. Sorry, I think I said that.

Whew, that's a lot of background, but that gets us caught up. I just took over & have some ideas & some things I need to do, but that's enough for now. I'll write more when I feel like it - probably in a few days.


	2. Chapter 2

Captain's Log, Stardate Stupid machine still insists on starting every entry with that, well, I refuse to use it.

Anyway, now it's me running Oz, our Battlestation & shipping company & boy is the paperwork and all that a hassle. I delegate as much as I can, and we don't believe in having lots of forms in any case, but still there have to be some and that takes time. But it takes a lot of getting used to.

But I wanted to write about an event that we just heard about. It has the crews laughing at the situation & feeling strong. That's good.

See, Kondor (that's one of our Hydran-built Q-ships) got a new captain. Now Captain Murray has good qualifications or we wouldn't have let him be a captain. But it turns out he's a little jumpy. We expect that will sort itself out, but in the meantime his ship has soot all over it & he is the butt of some jokes over that.

See, it was the first time Captain Sooty (I mean Murray) had been attacked, so he was nervous - even more so because it was an Orion pirate (they have a mean reputation and can back it up too), and more yet because he couldn't get the pirate to close in and board. We tend to just win boarding operations flat out, since nobody carries half so many troops as us. But this Orion ship was small - their smallest, a Light Raider, and the pirate captain knew he'd have trouble boarding in general – that even some normal freighters might fight him off. So he didn't want to take any risk. He was demanding that our crew abandon ship in shuttles. That way he'd eliminate his risk.

Well, Captain Murray played along & launched 'shuttles' which were actually fighters. But he launched them sneaky-like. He sent them out just like shuttles would launch - slowly, one at a time & had them throttle everything back to the same specs a shuttle would have. Then he added in just a touch of Electronic Counter Measures (that's ECM - something the Scout Sensors are good at) - just enough to help make their emissions signatures look right but not enough to make it clear he was using ECM. He figured, and he was right, that folks see what they expect to see & the pirate wasn't expecting him to have either fighters or that kind of ECM ability.

See, ECM is most often used as jamming. That's where you see what kind of signals the other guy is sending out & then send out a vast flood of the same kind of signals as loud as you can, so he can't tell which are the returns on his signals & which is your noise. It's like shouting in someone's ear when he's trying to have a conversation.

But it can be used a lot more subtly. Put simply, you see what kinds of signals he is sending out & what kinds of returns he expects, and you either add or subtract or alter those signals just a little so he gets a very different idea of what's going on. It gets complicated, but I won't bore you with talk of constructive or destructive interference & how you get around timing delays & how it's all done & such. In short, you can mess with their ability to tell what is out there – both telling what something is exactly, how far away it is etc, and even whether something is there at all, if it was hard to tell that to begin with.

Now there are tell-tales to watch for that'd let them know they're looking at false returns made by ECM. That takes a lot of computing power and is known as ECCM (or Electronic Counter Counter Measures), but folks don't usually bother to use that unless they suspect ECM is in use – that'd be like looking hard for invisible ink on paper – you don't bother unless you suspect it's there.

Now, visually, fighters look a lot like shuttles in any case, unless you can get a close look. And remember we're dealing with some distance here when we talk about ship combat – what we call Range 1 is actually 10,000 kilometers. Now 10,000 kilometers may sound like a lot, but modern sensors and scanners make that distance seem like nothing...unless something is altering their feedback to give them false impressions.

So anyway, folks rely on their sensors to tell them what's out there, and in this case the ECM fooled those ok.

Then when he was ready, Captain Murray let loose with everything he had, all at once: The fighters fired Gatlings and fusion beams, the ship fired overloaded Fusion beams, Gatlings, the Plasma Torpedo - the works. Well, he hit that teeny little pirate ship so hard it exploded & caught Kondor in the blast hard enough to knock down his shields and cover him in soot. Of the pirate, there wasn't even any salvage left.

It's kinda funny to imagine the look on the pirate's face as he went, in an instant, from being totally in charge to being totally outclassed. Pirates deserve that.

Still, while we tease him, we didn't censure Captain Murray. Better to hit too hard than not hard enough. See, our Q-ships (which is all of them but the tug and the base) are still based on a freighter, not a warship. That means they haven't got much in the way of shields, nor power to reinforce those, nor ability to soak up damage.

They're more like rattlesnakes than bears (talking about animals on Earth here) - if they can get in a surprise strike, they can mess you up good, but they can't slug it out well.

Captain's Log, Stardate No I'm not entering a date. I'm done with that.

Stupid automatic systems automatically doing what I don't want it to do...

Anyway...

Well, 3 weeks have passed & something interesting happened. It's like this:

I got approached with a business opportunity. Well, a different kind of one, I mean. Sure I get lots of business opportunities, some of them even good (It's amazing what some folks think is a good idea - seems the less actual business they've done, the less clue they have about what'd work & what wouldn't).

But, it isn't everyday that a competitor in exactly the same line of work fails and wants to sell out to me.

I didn't know he was a competitor until now, since he operated at quite a distance from where we operate (he was down in the Kzinti neutral zone). And he didn't operate long. That's because he tried to do it on the cheap. "optimize his margins" I think he said. Fooey! I say if you cut corners, you suffer & he proves that one right.

Anyway, there wasn't much to sell. He didn't have a good organization, or routes, or many contacts. His staff hate him 'cause he cut corners with them too ("maximizing productivity" he called it - by which he means he tried to squeeze as much work out of each of them as possible, with as little pay as possible for it - a great way to destroy your business, like burning your house to stay warm. No. If you want your folks to do well for you, you first do well for them. Simple.).

Anyway, he did have 2 large Q-ships to sell, plus some contacts & so on. One of the Q-ships is all busted up & therein lies the story of why he wanted to sell.

See, his ship was flying along, moving cargoes & such, when here comes a pirate. Now he didn't have extra boarding parties (that's troops, remember?) 'cause that costs for equipment & salaries & hazard pay and so on.

So he didn't want to be boarded.

And he hadn't sprung for training, so his captains would know what to do & not to do (Q-ships can't be flown the way you'd operate a warship - rattlesnakes, not bears, remember?).

He hadn't even filled his fighter bays with fighters (only Kzinti and Hydran Q-ships normally carry fighters, but he'd bought a pair of Kzinti Q-ships), since fighters are expensive.

Nor did he fill his drone racks with upgraded drones (the faster ones, which everybody but the super-cheap folks use).

He had hired a retired naval officer to captain it & he acted like his training told him to - he let the pirate get to short range, then warned him and opened fire. Well, he did some damage to the pirate, but not enough, and the pirate shot his engines off (what you hit in combat is more or less random, but in this case it happened to be the engines).

We know this from the logs, since the empty ship hulk was found drifting along in space.

Without engines, you can't power your systems – weapons for example.

Apparently the pirate didn't want to tow the derelict, so emptied it of cargo and valuables, took off its crew (presumably to be sold as slaves) and went his way.

Well that was enough for our business-genius, my competitor, to decide his "profit and loss tables were not favorable" (business-speak for 'I give up'), and look for a buyer.

And he found me. Well, whatever his business school taught him, I taught him how to really haggle, but it cost him for the lesson.

I got his ships & contacts etc cheap.

Some of his people stayed on too. We'll see how they work out - they have some things to unlearn. Luckily, good old Grandpaw sprung for the best training simulators, so they can get some simulated experience with no risk.

Anyway, we juggled our repair bay schedules to get them going again as soon as we could - an idle ship is a money pit and all that.

We gave them the same upgrades (including faster drones & Hydran fighters) as Sopwith Camel has, since it's Kzinti-built too.

Paw had given me the list of names they were going off of, though he said I'd have to figure out for myself why it was funny (haven't had time to figure that out yet).

From it, I named the ship that got blowed up Junkers. That seemed to fit. Then there were a whole lot of names starting with Sopwith. I liked those, so I named the other one Sopwith Cuckoo (it was on the list, I swear, though it also fit the unkind thoughts I was having for the former owner).

They're both running around delivering cargoes for us now.

Captain's Log, Stardate How do I turn this stupid function off?

Today was a big day for us. The first freighters arrived full of parts, materials, and Hydran workers to upgrade the base.

Of course they were our own freighters (the biggest ones - Zeppelin and Handley Page), since nobody else is really comfortable flying through the neutral zone - those that will, are only willing because we're here, but they still charge an arm and a leg in hazard pay to do so, so we used our own ships, which saved us a bunch. Anyway, because they were our own ships, nothing looked different at first. Not at least until work started.

See, Paw always wanted to upgrade Oz (that's our Battlestation) to be a full StarBase, and had saved up money to do so, which finally reached the full amount & so we went ahead and started (some folks incur debt to do things 'now' & then have trouble paying for it later & get ruined. We pay in full up front out of savings & it has saved us a number of times from surprise downturns).

When I asked Paw why upgrade, since the base hasn't really been attacked since the Orions did so when we first got here, he said that when you're not under attack is exactly the right time to do upgrades, but also pointed out that we could expand our business, since a Starbase has both more cargo capacity and more repair capacity than does our Battlestation and both are constantly full, since business is booming.

Makes sense to me.

Anyway, the most common way of building a StarBase is to build a Battlestation first, then upgrade it.

Now Battlestations and StarBases have been around a long time, so they've had plenty of time to sort out how to do so without impairing the abilities of the existing base. Heck, if they couldn't, then upgrade would not be the preferred method, since you don't tend to have Battlestations in safe places & they don't temporarily become safer just to accommodate your upgrade. In other words, they couldn't afford to make them vulnerable, so they found out how to do it without becoming vulnerable.

So, the base normally looks like this: there's a triangular central core, with three of what they call "Secondary Modules" equally spaced around it. Now "Secondary Modules" is confusing, given the many other types of "modules" there are, so we generally call them Docking Wings. See, each Docking Wing sticks out like an old-timey pier would stick out into the water, and you can dock ships to it for repair or transferring cargo.

Well, with a Starbase, The Core becomes a big circle, the Docking Wings get about 4 times bigger, and you get 6 where you only had 3 before.

So the way they do it is really involved, but here's the extremely simple version. They build a big framework first – the skeleton of the new base, & then start building sections onto that. Think of the current core as one pie slice of 6. They put the new 5 pie slices where they are going to go, but for a while the original pie slice sits on top of it all, so it can still operate unimpaired (part of me wonders about keeping it there permanently & just adding a 7th pie slice underneath to complete the circle - it'd give us a lot more space and capacity - we'll look into that).

They build the new Docking Wings in place on the framework, with the old Docking Wings originally on the old core, then move them to the new framework, alternating with the new docking wings, so it goes old, new, old, new etc for balance.

Then last, when the new docking wings are done & all 6 pie slices are done & fastened together as a new central core, one by one the old Docking Wings get drastically expanded into new Docking Wings (I think they cut 'em open down the middle, add new stuff so they get a lot bigger, seal it all together so it's strong, & then fill 'em back up with new systems - it's the only part that looks destructive & I think it will hurt to watch it.)

Anyway, it will take a while to complete, but already the new framework is growing sort of like a spider web all underneath the base. It will get really big & extensive before they start covering it over & eventually installing new systems. Even so, it's exciting.

What's more, they Hydrans brought with them plans for Pseudo Fighter variants and a slightly bigger Pseudo Fighter, called a Pseudo Fighter Leader. One variant has 4 barracks & that intrigued me. The PF Leader has 4 extra systems, So we're working with them to keep 2 of those as-is (the extra power reactor and tractor beam) and swap the other 2 for barracks. They said it will be no problem, so we're going to build 4 or 5 of those.

Captain's Log, Stardate I can't believe there's no way to turn this header function off!

Well, this sucks - Sparky is retiring. He's the Romulan that Grandpaw crewed with. Romulans live a long time, you see. Anyway, he was a very capable administrator & really helpful with science & technology too. Plus he had good contacts in the Romulan Empire that helped out a lot one way or another.

For instance, just last month, he came up with a good deal for us - he said he knew a planetary governor out in the hinterlands, well away from any borders or dangerous areas, who wanted to sell off a squadron of fighters to help pay for some personal project. Well, these were Gladiator 2 fighters & they carry a Plasma F each (plus a Phaser 3) and there are a lot of uses for that.

Not like I'm slighting our Hydran Stinger 2 fighters at all - they're still the best.

But it helps to diversify, Paw always said. If we have only one trick, then opponents learn how to work around it (which was another reason to buy those Kzinti Q-ships and arm them differently than the Hydran ones - keep your opponents guessing).

With the Hydran fighters, you have to get in real close to be effective. But Plasma Torpedoes, even Type F (the weakest type) can work wonders even at the mid-ranges that navy ships tend to fight at.

So of course we bought them up quick.

They're in storage now, while we try to work out how to swap a Gatling Phaser for that Phaser 3 (that'd make them far more effective). It should be possible, and we have the Hydran examples to work from, plus actual fighter-sized Gatling Phaser modules in storage waiting to be put into newly-built Stinger 2s. It just takes a lot of finicky fiddling & such. The type of fiddling that Sparky was good at.

Rats.

He's leaving.

I managed to distract myself from that for a minute.

Well, it's his right to retire, and he will do so as a very rich man, since he's been working for a share of the profits & has also earned a lot of bonuses over the years.

But we'll miss him. And he was our last Romulan with any influence in the Empire.

Even worse though, is why he is retiring. No, it's not 'cause he learned I call him Sparky. At least I don't think he ever learned that. I still call him Magnifico to his face.

No, it's far worse than that. He said there's been a change in the government of the Romulan Empire, and that the new one is a bad one. Far more rapacious than most governments are.

See, most governments will never be satisfied with how much money they take from their folks, but at least they increase the amount gradually, so you can go quite a while (centuries even, sometimes) before things collapse & start over in a revolution.

They're like parasites, draining the lifeblood from their people & when they get too eager & drain too much, the host dies. Same idea.

So this new government looks to squeeze as much income as they can from the people, as fast as they can.

But worse, they're aggressive too. More so than most Romulans, that is.

Sparky says it'd be best if we sell out quick, before anybody really feels the impact of the new government & prices drop as others sell out & leave the area.

Well, I'm not selling.

We're in the Neutral Zone, not the Romulan Empire, so technically they can't strong-arm us with their navy - though of course that's just a treaty they have with the Feds - that neither one will send navy ships into the neutral zone. But, being Romulan, they ignore that all the time & send ships in whenever they feel like it.

Still, it takes a small fleet to begin to threaten a Battlestation & if they send one, then the Feds should respond, right?


	3. Chapter 3

Captain's Log, Stardate Apparently you really can't just turn this off.

So we're a bit nervous about this new Romulan government & have been keeping our ears open to learn what we could about them.

What we hear is not encouraging and it's only been a couple weeks.

Business is still good for now & we hope that will continue. But just in case we're diversifying our trade so it's a bit less dependent on the Romulan Neutral Zone. Among other things, we're working with the Kzinti contacts we got when we bought out the business-genius. That's going well, one of them is even in a position to arrange the sale of certain ships (Q-ships and pods at least - maybe more), so we bought 2 new Kzinti-built Large Q-ships to trade in that area & set up routes.

The ships are Sopwith Dolphin and Sopwith Rhino & are outfitted the same as the rest of our Kzinti Q-ships.

Captain's Log, Stardate I'll see if I can get my guys to reprogram it.

Well, I don't get caught by surprise much, but today was a doozy.

Rinthrak, an officer on a ship here to pick up cargo, asked to speak with me. He told me that was was with the Orion pirates here to discuss a deal!

I was spechless - just too amazed to think they'd ever consider dealing with us after the beating we handed them when they tried to strongarm Grandpaw when he first set up here. Well, it turns out Orion pirates have rival clans. We weakened the one that was here (the Happy Worker clan, which is mostly focused on slaves), so this new one who spoke with me today (The Black Ledger clan) is looking to move in on their territory.

He said that Black Ledger clan (who is mostly focused on smuggling) has no beef with us & even feels a little gratitude towards us for opening such an opportunity for them.

While that is interesting, their offer was not.

They wanted to buy our station for "pennies on the dollar" as they used to say.

When I told him what I thought of his plan, he surprised me and remained polite! Well I'd meant to be insulting, but he said it was just business & if I changed my mind, to contact him.

Amazing!

Anyway, we searched his ship & cargo & anything he'd come near, just in case. It looks like they were expecting that, so they didn't have anything on board we would object to. But you can't be too careful with pirates.

Captain's Log, Stardate Stupid Machine won't let it go.

Well, we had begun to expect something like this, but it's still sobering when it happens.

Today a Romulan navy Destroyer got here with ultimatum.

They say that we'll be paying taxes to them from now on.

At the rate he named, it isn't taxes, it's ruinous extortion. We couldn't pay that for long without going out of business & having to sell out (presumably to them).

We told him no such thing was going to happen - that this is the Neutral Zone & not under their jurisdiction, so we weren't going to pay them a dime.

He got all worked up (Romulans are pretty arrogant most of the time, though the ones we have working for us know how to control themselves), and made vague threats along the lines of "you will regret this".

We'll see.

They can't send navy units here without violating the Neutral Zone treaty with the Federation, and without combat ships, what can they do to us?

Though come to think of it, today's Destroyer was here in violation of that treaty & they didn't seem to care. We'll send the tapes of it to the Feds & let them hash that out with the Romulans.

Captain's Log, Stardate Infernal Machine.

Well, the Feds sent a 'sternly worded letter' to the Romulans. Apparently that's about all they are willing to do. I guess it fits - no treaty is worth anything unless, when push comes to shove, you are willing to go to war to defend it. And the Feds are far too peaceloving to be willing to go to war, or even incur a tiny risk of that, for anything that isn't really major.

Fine.

We can defend ourselves. We let all our ship captains know the situation and that they should be on special alert.

Captain's Log, Stardate, never buy a machine that promises to do everything for you!

So that went downhill in a hurry - the Romulans wasted no time. The morning after we told them we wouldn't pay tax, they flooded the Neutral Zone near us with small naval ships (mostly that means Frigates and Destroyers) acting like pirates.

They stop and board every ship they see and loot valuables from them, which they call 'taxing' them. I think it was intended to hurt us, with a side benefit of 'taxing' others as well. It is really hurting our trading partners, since we can't be everywhere. We have a number of ships, but nowhere near as many as the Romulan Navy does. That's like comparing a sandbox to a seashore.

So anyway, Junkers and Bleriot (That's 2 of our Q-ships) got pulled over early on, by a Snipe-B Frigate and a Battlehawk -R Frigate respectively.

Then soon after that, Sopwith Pup got accosted & boarded by a Skyhawk-A destroyer.

All 3 of our Q-ships got boarded and all 3 won their fights.

Nobody expects ships (especially freighters) to have any significant amount of troops, so we just keep winning every time they try it.

It isn't even a contest mostly, and the surprise when they realize they are not facing what they expected – that sure does help.

Anyway, it keeps getting funnier every time I see it.

Now you may be wondering about the suicide charges Romulan ships have. Yup, they still have 'em.

But see, nobody really wants to die.

You have to really work on your folks to get 'em so hyped up they're willing to die rather than be captured. And the Romulans have let that slide. So not one has blown themselves up yet.

No surprise - I wouldn't blow myself up either. Nor would I ask my crews to, so we remove those charges when we find 'em.

So Bleriot and Junkers had no trouble towing their captured frigates back to Oz. We docked them to the base and set to work breaking their security. See, most naval vessels lock up all their power and weapons systems to prevent an enemy from using it if it gets captured. They call that 'setting the security interlocks'.

We don't have the codes, so we don't get to use it...for a while.

Now techy folks know that if you have physical possession of something, no security can stop them for long. Heck, think of it this way – we have a full repair base here: at worst, we can completely disassemble a locked down weapon or engine into its component parts, then build a new one from mostly the same parts. What's left would be the ROM's (That's Read Only Memory chips) with control software & which are locked by the codes we don't have. But we build new systems like that all the time – we have our own ROM's and software we can just swap in. Then we're good to go (sure, there is some translating of the controls to do & such, but that just takes a little time).

Anyway, then we can study their ROM's at leisure to crack what's inside them &, by comparing ROM's and other esoteric approaches, we can break those codes.

But all that takes time, so the captured ships got towed back.

Now Sopwith Pup had a harder time of it. She was towing back her Romulan prize (the Skyhawk Destroyer) when she sees another ship coming on her Scout sensors. That gave her a little warning time, so she called for help, then figured the vectors & such to confirm her need, then called to confirm that. See, she was far enough from base that she couldn't get there before the other ship got to her & she couldn't just turn & run from the other ship.

Freighters, even Q-shipped freighters, are slow.

And with her towing a Romulan warship, she figured rightly that there was no way she could fool them into thinking she was just a harmless little freighter.

Now Q-ships need that appearance of harmlessness, since they have thin shields & little power for reinforcing them, so they don't stand toe-to-toe and fight very well.

We don't know why that Romulan was headed for Sopwith Pup – maybe that Skyhawk got off a distress message before it was done.

It had to be something like that. See, ships towing other ships look (from a distance) like bigger ships & that's not who the Romulans are out to get – they expect large & small freighters, free traders etc. Anything bigger than that could be a threat, so they call in information about it & then go stop someone else unless reinforcements arrive to help.

Anyway, Oz scrambled Pseudo-Fighters and they went maximum speed towards Sopwith Pup. PF's are speedy enough that they got there in time, which, I imagine, was a big relief to captain Graf (he's a Gorn).

So this oncoming Romulan Light Cruiser gets a good look at the Sopwith pup & what she's towing & he gets all angry and unreasonable – enough so that he didn't turn tail and run when he saw a flotilla of PF's arriving.

Well that was his last mistake.

He got warmed up a little by long-range fire, then he learned how much damage Gatling Phasers can do at close range.

We towed back the wreckage which was all that was left of him. It's good for scrap metal at least.

Now we put the rest of Oz's PF's on patrol in case of any similar need arising. And that sorta helped, since the Romulans stayed further away generally, but sorta hurt, since, one time, the PF's weren't there when we could have used them.

See, a free trader we have a contract with was being pursued by a Romulan frigate and calling us for help, but we had nobody nearby at that time to send.

But he did manage to get close enough that we could launch drones.

Now these drone launchers are on the base to give us better range, as I think I mentioned. So when you want better range, get better range.

No half measures.

So, we had loaded up fast versions of Type 3 drones. Most drones have enough endurance to keep going long enough for you to fire 2 or 3 volleys of Phasers (if that gives you a reference point).

Now that's a lot of range, for the fast ones.

But Type 3's are special. They go more than 8 times as long as the others. They can fly so far that we can't see targets for them, despite having scout sensors (though if you have a Scout PF forwards, he can spot targets for them & that make the range truly amazing.

Anyway, this trader was running for us as fast as he could & so we fired a full volley of drones to help him.

Now there are only so many weapons on a frigate & he was going to have real trouble with just one volley, but just in case we fired a second one quick. Now he could have still saved himself.

No not the way you're thinking – he couldn't turn and outrun the drones – they're faster than that.

But all ships carry emitters they can load into their shuttles and charge up with energy from the ship, such that they can launch that shuttle and have it fool seeking weapons into thinking it is the ship, so they hit the shuttle instead.

They call that Wild Weasel.

But you can't do that if you are moving fast, or if you fire, since that lets the seeking weapons (drones in this case but it works against Plasma Torpedoes too) know which one is the real ship.

Anyway, this Romulan was not in a situation where he could have used a Wild Weasel unless he made the decision immediately (they take a while to charge up) and took immediate action on that decision (an emergency slowdown, that is, which also has its risks, and would have let the Trader get away).

Well, we don't know for sure, but it looks like he didn't decide quick enough & those drones blew him apart.

The Free Trader decided he didn't want to do business in this vicinity for a while. So after transshipping his cargo with us (he IS a trader – they don't wank away from contracts almost collected unless it's unavoidable), he took off for greener pastures.

So did a bunch of other traders, we came to find out.

Anyway, so far so good – we seem to be weathering it, and our captains did well and got bonuses for it, but the real amazing story of the day was Captain Connors of the Spad.

He's ex navy – they threw him out for being a maverick. He was way too unorthodox for their tastes. It seems he still spends his time thinking up all kinds of unconventional strategies.

So he got pulled over once & captured a destroyer, just like the other captains. But then he went back out and aggressively set himself up to be pulled over some more.

He cruised around watching the Scout sensors for any ships spotted, then carefully positioned himself so he could 'accidentally' fly by it and get seen by it, while heading the right way so that he can then convincingly make a 'hopeless' run for the Federation border, and thereby pretty much guarantee he got pulled over.

He took over 2 more ships that way before the Romulans give up, for now, on pulling ships over.

His take for the day was 2 more Snipe -B Frigates and another Skyhawk -A destroyer.

His bonus was quite large.

Captain Connors, when he heard about the drone volleys we fired, even started talking about a way to improve on that.

See, there's regular explosive mines & then another type called "Captor" mines, which have weapons they fire instead of exploding. Then he got really technical, but the short form is that there's something special about how immobile bases maintain the mines & can control their weapons, so that a Captor mine full of drones can launch them fully six times as fast as a regular drone launcher.

They have other kinds of captor mines too – some have Phaser 2's and some have Disruptors etc – variations for all the major weapons systems.

But only the ones with Drones or Stasis-stored Plasma Torpedo Type F have that faster fire rate.

Anyway, mines like that are universal – every empire has 'em. So it wasn't too hard to send off for plans to start making some of our own.

We'll fit a few in our build schedule, then get back to work on the newly captured ships and our normal repair business.

All the captured ships are docked to Oz while we work on getting them ready for use again.

I don't know what use we have exactly for warships – escorting trade convoys maybe? If nothing else we can sell them, but to get the most out of that, they have to be working (and you have to demonstrate that).

So we are advertising that we're hiring more crew & also have some of the Romulans on our staff translating things & otherwise preparing them.

So the Romulan Navy has pulled back for now – apparently they don't like losing ships like that. Maybe they'll give up on harassing us, but somehow that seems unlikely.

Captain's Log, Stardate Not now I'm busy

So I'm glad that, when something happens, we always have meetings & plan what to do next time & chew over a few "what if's".

A "What if" happened today.

It's only been a couple days since the Romulans tried stopping every freighter & lost a few ships, but they're back at it again today.

But this time they are using troop-carrying ships to do it.

See, a lot of their destroyers and cruisers are modular – so they can swap out a set of A modules (for general combat) and swap in a set of D modules for a Minelayer, or E modules for a Pseudo-fighter tender & so on.

So now we have a bunch of Sparrowhawk (that's the Light Cruiser) and Skyhawk (it's the destroyer, remember) ships running around with the G modules on, making them troopships.

There aren't enough of them to stop everybody, but they stop enough (especially since shipping has fallen off these last few days). And, more importantly, they don't get captured by any ships they stop.

Troopships have enough boarding parties to take just about anything.

Just about.

Remember Spad was also a troopship? Yup - It has a troop transport pod instead of a cargo pod. Plus it has our usual extra boarding parties and extra barracks.

So while most of our ships used their Scout sensors to stay far away from Romulans, (since we only like one version of chip capturing – the one where we win), one ship, the Spad, coincidentally run by Captain Connors, went out and ran interference for the rest.

See, for any Romulan ships which would be hard for our other ships to avoid or outrun, Captain Connors would hurry over 'get in the way'.

That is, he'd "just happen to get caught" by the Romulan ship in question, which would pull him over and board him.

With the Romulan thus distracted, our other ship would get away.

We're not sure how Captain Connors managed to always be in the right place at the right time, since Spad isn't that fast either.

When I asked, he said something complicated about skillful use of sensors & interpolating & integrating what all our various ships were seeing.

Whatever he does, it works.

First he caught a Skyhawk-G. That was a surprisingly hard battle: they carry a lot of troops on those, but Spad carries more (plus, we carry the best - Gorns are tough as nails & Kzinti are fast & agile & love to fight - so much so that we have to constantly have plenty of sports available for them to play, special sports, so they can work off that energy. Also, any outstanding individuals that can keep up with Kzintis and Gorns - and some of those individuals are so impressive they can take on a whole boarding party {a normal one} in an even fight).

So anyway, when Captain Connors got that one towed safely back to base, he got replacements for his casualties, then called for volunteers to ride in the cargo space, just for a day or so.

See, he said there was an urgent need to teach the Romulans not to do this & that Spad was the ship to do it.

Any of the rest of our ships they could capture, but not Spad. And so Spad had to go out & give them the idea that this approach was a bad one & they should give it up.

And he needed the extra troops in case he ran into a Sparrowhawk Cruiser set up for troop transport.

See, as many troops as he normally carries, the SparrowHawk carries more, and that could be bad.

It's lucky he did (he says there's no such thing as luck – just good planning). Anyway, that's what he ran into: a SparrowHawk -G troop transport. Well you can bet they were confident when they pulled over this unremarkable freighter.

But boy were they surprised when they lost the boarding action.

Now you couldn't normally run around with troops in cargo space – not for more than a day or so at most, but this is the kind of thing that Captain Connors is known for – making stuff work & pulling off things you'd have said couldn't be done. Well, he went back out looking for more, but nothing came of it.

So I have a bunch of Romulan Navy ships docked to my base all of a sudden.

Well, ex-Romulan Navy.

Coincidentally (not) the Romulans have pulled back again & aren't pulling ships over anymore while they figure out what to do.

Speaking of figuring out what to do, I'm not naming the new ships unless I keep them, and that isn't decided yet.

We'll get 'em fixed up and working again, then see what they can do & if we can find a use for them. Idle ships are a money pit, but they'd bring a good price if we sell them.


	4. Chapter 4

Captain's Log, Stardate Oh the joys of a helpful machine (not)

So I have all these small bits and pieces of wreckage floating around my base just now & getting it all swept up is a pain. All the shuttles, tractor beams, & PF's with tractor beams will be busy all day picking up little hazardous fragments of Heavy Cruiser.

But we can't leave navigational hazards like that lying around.

See, the Romulans are a mite upset with us for having acquired some of their ships. What seems fair to me apparently doesn't seem fair to them, and they got all bothered even by a simple suggestion.

Romulans aren't smart when they are bothered.

Well the story goes like this – a FireHawk Heavy Cruiser (heavier than most too – almost a Battle Cruiser) pulls up to the base and demands that we return their ships, plus pay taxes, fines, & penalties. I nicely pointed out that this is the Neutral Zone, not Romulan Territory, so they don't make laws here, and that the international laws on piracy and salvage said the ships are mine. Then I very kindly offered to sell the ships to him if he wanted them. I named a fair price (though with a nice profit for us in it), but for some reason he got really upset. No, more upset than that.

See, Romulans have a problem with how upset they can get & this guy was an expert at it. But one thing he wasn't an expert on was ship construction. Base construction specifically.

See, he saw the construction work happening on the base, and all these bare support beams & spots wide open to space & such & figured we were helpless, or mostly so.

He was pretty impressed with his own ship too, and seemed to really enjoy telling us all about what he was going to do to us.

When I tried to inform him he was mistaken, he really blew his top and fired on us.

That was his last mistake.

He had annoyed me a tad too, so I didn't wait for the Phaser 4's to take him apart – that might have taken 2 volleys or maybe even 3, his ship was that tough. No, I gave him some drones too. I don't think he liked the gift, but we'll never know.

If the Romulans were upset before, I doubt this will have improved things.

Trade sure has fallen off & doesn't look like it will pick back up again soon.

Captain's Log, Stardate Tiresome machine

So young Captain Andrews seems to be out to make a name for himself and try to catch up with his uncle, Captain Bill Connors. He grew up with his uncle Bill and apparently some of his stories and ideas sunk in, since Captain Andrews today demonstrated a good bit of talent and initiative. He got a good bonus for it too.

See, there he was in the Handley Page (that's the Large Ore Hauler we got turned into a Q-ship. It doesn't make as much profit as the rest, so seemed a good place to start off a new Captain – there's not too many ways to screw up hauling inert bulk cargo for which contracts already exist. Also the payout on ore is low enough that pirates don't bother her as much as the rest).

Anyway, he was Captaining the HP as her crews like to call her, picking up ore at our mining claim on Tweedle-Dum, and spreading grass seed to the winds because it's at that stage of terraforming, when a Romulan Warship shows up.

They keep looking for ways to hurt us & thought they'd try this new one - taking our planets (though they've already hurt trade here severely – few ships come by anymore and boy does that hurt us.)

Well young Mac (that's Captain Andrews) played it cool, acting like a normal innocent ore hauler & ran for it.

See, the best way to get a predator to chase and catch you is to run from it. And Warships are predators, especially when crewed by Romulans.

So the Romulan Cruiser chases him down and demands he halt etc. Apparently the Romulan Captain wasn't concerned that he might be a Q-ship, (though the news about that has to be getting around the Romulan fleet by now) since nobody Q-ships Ore Haulers. This worked because Mac and the HP were already past the range of the Planetary Defense Satellites (DefSats that is). See, if they hadn't been, then those would have shot at the Cruiser (A SparrowHawk-D minesweeper) and forced a different sequence of events.

But anyway, not only did we get the usual result of being boarded (we captured them, in case you weren't sure), it actually happened fast enough the Romulans didn't get a chance to set their safety interlocks (which you do when getting captured to prevent the enemy from using the ship soon).

See, Mac kept most of his boarding parties hidden in that vast cargo area while the Romulan boarding parties entered his ship. He played at actually being captured, which put the enemy ship offguard, meanwhile his boarding parties got into position, snuck across to the enemy ship suddenly and in overwhelming numbers, and the rest of his troops ambushed the Romulans on Handley Page & defeated them too.

Net result: Mac in is control of both ships and the Romulan ship is usable right now, except for the cloaking device for which we don't have the codes yet (though we're working on that – the more ROMs you have the easier it gets and we have several).

So Mac Andrews puts a skeleton crew onto the Sparrowhawk-D, calls in to us so we know to expect it & separates the ships so he can leave.

Well, right then the other half of the Romulan task force arrives. Apparently the Cruiser had gotten ahead - it didn't want to go as slow as the freighter.

So anyway, 2 new Romulan ships show up – a Battlehawk Frigate and a Large Ore Hauler. Well, Mac figured it'd look to the Romulans like he'd just been pulled over & taxed, but wouldn't look that way for long – they'd call their cruiser & want to talk over something or other, so he had to act quick.

Well he chose a course that took him near the enemy freighter, but not too near, and when he was close he grabbed it in a tractor beam.

See, mostly folks only use tractor beams at range 1, but you can use them at range 2 or even 3 if you're willing to pay exorbitant energy costs (which is why most folks don't even consider it an option & tend to forget you can).

So, if he'd flown by at range 1, they may have been concerned, but not at range 3. But he grabbed them anyway & then blasted the Frigate good.

See, the Romulans had arrived with Plasma Torpedoes charged & ready to fire, in case of any problems, but seeing a non-threatening situation which their cruiser appeared to be on top of, they let the charge go & the Plasma went inert again.

So all this frigate had to shoot back at us was 4 Phaser 1's, which almost knocked down HP's shield, but not quite, since the range was 7 and they don't do well at that range.

But the 4 Plasma Torpedoes Type F (or just Plasma F) that Handley Page launched back sure did a number on that BattleHawk.

Surprisingly it didn't blow up, but the hulk that was left was in no condition to fight.

Well Mac boarded that too, if you can call it that. Another way to put it was that he rescued the shell-shocked survivors and took them into custody.

The Romulan Ore Hauler turned out to be using its vast cargo space to bring in planetary defenses. They had had extra troops too, but not enough to matter. It was shipping in DefSats, Mines (several types), Planetary Defense Bases, plus Fighters and even Pseudo-Fighters to base at those bases.

Now that'd make for a pretty effective defense overall, but it'd also take time to set up.

A lot of time.

And Mac judged that we didn't have that time.

See, on his scout sensors he could see a curious thing – at very long range, he saw a flotilla of Pseudo-fighters suddenly appear out of nowhere headed this way, & then disappear. Now that can mean only one thing – a cloaked Pseudo-fighter tender is coming here & has launched outside of what it thinks is your detection range.

With PF's launched, he is ready for battle, and a full flotilla of PF's plus their tender would have no trouble taking out poor Handley Page.

The Sparrowhawk wouldn't have been enough help even if it had a full crew (that would have resulted in something like a fair fight, and we avoid those, since they cause a lot of damage win or lose, especially since this fight would have been at a disadvantage for our side). Anyway, cloaked ships move slowly, since they have to use a lot of their energy for cloaking, and they don't see very well, since they have to use only the passive sensors, not the active ones, so Mac had a little time.

So he collected our DefSats (the standard constellation of 5 wouldn't bother a PF flotilla much, so he saved that investment for later) and the mining base, and prepared to leave quick.

Now he could do that quicker than you think, because the cheapest option had been to put down a pre-fab mining base, which is basically a specialized pod. And the planet was not yet habitable (though getting close) so the miners tend to stay in base for everything they can (like refining & smelting & so on) and work in enclosed vehicles to do the actual mining.

So Mac gave them the minimum warning, then just pulled the base right up off the surface with a tractor beam.

The same for the 2 vehicles that were away from base at the time.

He had the new SparrowHawk he'd just captured tow that and the Battlehawk hulk, back to Oz as fast as they could. Even towing those, they were still faster than the cloaked ships, & so got away.

He wanted to leave the Romulans some mines to play with, but there just wasn't time for more than two. We hope they got a lovely surprise.

Mac accompanied the captured ships partway, until it was clear they were going to make it. Then he showed real initiative.

Bravery too.

He figured that if the Romulans were moving in on Tweedle-Dum, they may be planning to move in on Tweedle-Dee at the same time, so he headed over there quick – as quick as he could, knowing the "it's just an ore-hauler & can't be a Q-ship' mentality won't last long.

Now the Tweedles aren't far apart, but it still took enough time so that when he arrived, the Romulans there figured they had the situation under control.

See, Mac sees the wreckage of our DefSats in orbit around the planet, with a Romulan PF Tender (SparrowHawk-E to be exact) there and all it's PF's docked.

It looked like they'd taken just a little damage from fighting our DefSats, and the tender pulled them in to repair them. You wouldn't do that in a combat situation, but it seems he felt combat was over & he had friends on the way, to arrive soon, anyway.

So the Romulan Captain is there feeling confident when this ore hauler arrives, apparently here to collect ore from the mining operation on the planet.

Ore Haulers usually have only a single Phaser 3 and a Phaser 2 – barely enough to shoot down a single drone each, so he isn't concerned about it, especially since Captain Andrews turned out to be a good actor.

Mac is so good at acting obsequious & terrified, that the PF tender did not even launch PF's, it was that confident.

So it boards the Handley Page & is captured, along with its PF's, which never did manage to launch.

Well right in the middle of that boarding action, the Romulan Ore Hauler which the Romulan had been expecting arrives. So the cruiser calls for help & the Ore Hauler, which normally wouldn't think about getting into a fight, pulls up and boards, thinking that their extra troops would make a difference.

Not enough of one.

We captured both ships.

Then their frigate arrived late, but in time to get destroyed by HP's fighters while it de-cloaked (see, there's a brief fade-in while he's helpless. It's brief, but plenty of time for fighters already in position and waiting for you).

Mac called down to our mining base & boy were they relieved to hear his voice – they were expecting to hear the Romulans calling again, this time to say it was time to be hauled off to a prison world. So they were glad to be picked up and hauled back to Oz, along with the 2 Romulan Ships (the frigate was just so much drifting wreckage, some of which we pulled in, since the alloys are worth something, but we didn't have time for it all).

It was all that the HP could manage to cram in her cargo holds and tow, but she did it (with some complicated gyrations involving tractor beams from the Romulan Ore Hauler too, since it didn't have interlocks, not being a naval vessel).

They left behind a few mines for the Romulans to find too - hopefully unexpectedly. They'd have left a nice thick minefield, but couldn't risk taking the time to do so – there were indications the Romulans had gotten a distress call out.

We figure we can go back to the Tweedles when things calm down a bit.

But young Mac Andrews wasn't done yet.

He had a lot of captured Romulan crews sitting in cargo and you can't keep that up for long. So he wanted to repatriate them to Solos (well, kinda repatriate – they'd be with other Romulans, but free to go back to the Empire or stay and farm, as they chose), and he wanted to check on Refuge too, while he was at it.

We'd have sent other ships with him for that, but none were in the area at the time (though Stumpy was on the way).

Refuge and Solos have been good trading partners.

So off he goes, to Refuge first, given that it was closer.

Big surprise, he finds the Romulans there, in the middle of taking it over.

They have a Monitor (that's a ship built for defending things – it's slow but heavily armed) with a couple DefSats already set up & working on more, and a ground base just being set up.

So Captain Andrews does his thing and pretends to flee in panic on seeing a warship, which gets the warship to make sure to demand he stay still and prepare to be boarded.

This is, of course, what he wants.

The boarding action goes the usual way (I never get tired of that) and we capture the monitor. It controls the DefSats, so they didn't shoot at the Handley Page (they were told not to, so it could come close and be boarded, and they never got told otherwise) but the interlocks are on so we can't tell them to stand down & be captured.

So HP had to shoot them down.

That went easy because the stupid machines were told not to shoot HP & so just stayed inert while being destroyed.

Then HP launched fighters to go take down the ground base and any other Romulan Military things they found. They were helped by the citizens of Refuge, who called Mac with information.

Well after blasting a few vehicles and bunkers, the fighters were done, having freed Refuge again.

The citizens were very happy about this and found the occasion motivational – they dipped into their budget (which had grown tremendously from trading with us) and bought a bunch of defenses. The same kinds of stuff – ground batteries, DefSats, mines, but no fighter bases or PF's, since they didn't have trained crew for those.

We accepted the order (they bought from us) and delivered it as fast as we could, which turned out to be just a couple hours away – Stumpy had arrived back at Oz during the battle, so she loaded up with DefSats etc & took 'em straight to Refuge, then hauled the Romulan Monitor back when they were done.

Stumpy didn't mind hanging out there for a while, setting up defenses, because she can take care of herself pretty well, with her full squadron of fighters.

Well, while Stumpy was busy doing that, Handley Page hurried on to Solos.

But apparently her exceptionally busy day was pretty much over – the Romulans hadn't arrived to take it over.

Not yet at least, though the trend seemed pretty clear.

Clear enough that they emulated Refuge and bought a bunch of defenses from us, so they could be ready when and if the Romulans did decide to annex them.

So as soon as Stumpy was done at Refuge, she went to Solos and did it all again – setting up DefSats, mines & all.

Handley Page just brokered the deal, dropped off the captured Romulan crews (I understand Solos has a class they make them attend to see if they can get them to see things their way) & then came home for a much needed rest after a very busy and impressive day.

Though, on the way, she did swing close enough to Tweedle-Dum – just barely in range mind you, to see that there were several Romulan ships there – far more than we care to try conclusions with.

The whole crew is going to be rich after their bonuses from the day. That will dip into our savings for now, but we'll more than make it good once we sell the ships.

Hopefully that will be soon, since, with trade around here almost entirely dried up (we're about the only ones still shipping around here & even we have to be very careful about it) our income has plummeted.

We checked with a few possible buyers but no have takers yet (none that count – the Orions will buy anything, but we won't sell them combat ships, given the evil they'd do with them). The Federation is afraid to buy captured Romulan Ships – they fear that doing so may upset the Romulans. The Gorn aren't interested – they think Romulan ships are inferior to theirs. The Kzinti and Hydrans don't want to use technology that is that different from what they use now & don't want to pay to convert them.

We hope to talk somebody in to it soon though.

We're not going to sell the Ore Haulers though – we can use those, especially once we crack the codes to use their cloaking devices.

And we need them working for us.

So we're working on them to bring them up to spec: we bought a pair of Kzinti Battle-Pods (one for each Ore-Hauler – those Kzinti contacts we got from the business-genius are working out ok), worked them up the same way that we did the Kzinti Battle Pod that is part of Spad, then inserted them into the ships in place of one cargo pod each, just like on Spad. We gave 'em our usual other upgrades too (a couple barracks and so on). We also gave one of its remaining cargo pods the treatment a small q-ship would get (Kzinti type to go with the battle pod, so that's a Phaser 1, 3 drone launchers and 2 fighters).

Then we got adventurous – we recognized that one of the ships was slow and underpowered (they're different designs), so we swapped the engines for a set that was going to go on a Free Trader (we build and sell those, so we had a couple sets on hand). Now that upgrades her warp power by about half, and makes her look a little non-standard, but lots of freighters are non-standard, so they should both still make convincing Q-ships.

Plus she'll get around lots faster & the more cargo runs they can make in the same time, the more profit we get.

We'll probably do the same upgrade to Handley Page and Zeppelin too.

It leaves us with her old engines on hand but we can use those on new freighters we build to sell, or maybe even experiment with attaching them to a Monitor, in addition to its existing engines, to make it go faster. I'll have Vindair and the Whiz Kids look into that – that's our group of experimenters, tinkerers, and scientists, and their leader.

We named the new Romulan-built Large Ore Haulers Sopwith Buffalo and Sopwith Hippo (that's the one whose engines we upgraded). They're not done with upgrades yet (they just started), but when they are we'll put 'em to work asap.

Oh, as an aside, you'd think all this Romulan Navy activity in the Neutral zone (where they are prohibited from being by treaty with the Federation) would bother the Federation, right? Not so much, apparently. They just sent another sternly worded letter. Great.


	5. Chapter 5

Captain's Log, Stardate Sometimes I want to take a hammer and...

In a tense situation like this, information is key, so we've had our feelers out, so to speak.

From various sources, we hear that the Romulan Government (this new group at least) think they are destined to rule the galaxy & they are beginning by a tactic similar to playing chicken: they suddenly plant colonies or military bases in disputed areas, then declare it their territory and vow to defend it if necessary. Unless the other side is willing to go to war right then, it works.

And if you keep each such encroachment small, each one by itself seems too trivial to go to war over.

Plus the Federation seems very unwilling to risk war right now.

Our two planets, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, are almost done being terraformed & the Romulans saw that & took them.

They've flown the Romulan flag & claimed them.

Nevermind that we claimed them first, they, like most governments, think they can do anything they want.

And governments have enough force to get away with a lot.

They also want our 2 planets because it expands their territory and pushes back the neutral zone.

We however, are more willing to go to war than the Federation are. Heck, we're effectively at war already, so, as they say, if you're paying the price already, why not take what you're paying for?

Sigh.

But willingness is not ability.

What we have is a base that is immobile (well, you can turn off the positional stabilizers and tow it, but it can't fire any weapons while you do that, so it's really vulnerable & therefore a bad idea to tow it into danger), a military-class tug with a squadron of fighters (good old Stumpy), a bunch of Q-ships that really don't fight well except as surprise attackers (at which they excel), so you wouldn't fly them in as an assault fleet (not and have them survive anyway. Plus they need to keep running cargo to keep up what income we can.), and a bunch of captured ships we can't operate.

Yet.

We've cracked the safety interlocks on one Snipe B (though not the codes for its cloaking device yet), and that will help speed up doing the same for the others.

Plus there is the SparrowHawk-D Captain Andrews caught without its interlocks engaged.

But while we've hired some folks that can crew them, it isn't enough yet - we need more numbers and training both (we're working on that).

So while we'd like to kick the Romulans in the teeth and take our planets back (and arm them so maybe we could keep them), we just can't.

Not yet.

We'd need surprise in any case, since they have several fleets & we don't. And, sure as anything, we haven't got surprise.

Sigh.

Captain's Log, Stardate not right now, I'm busy

I'm going for it.

While I don't like to dip into savings, that looks like the only way to save our business.

Trade has fallen off almost to zero, nobody comes to our repair bays anymore, we've lost our 2 mining operations & even the Q-ships get less cargo shipped because they have to be so careful now.

So what am I going for?

Well, nobody wants to buy the ships - the captured Romulan Navy ships, I mean - we always have a good market for any pirate ships we capture, by which I mean armed freighters that do incidental piracy & board our ships, though even the steady stream of those has slowed significantly along with the trade around here, since the Romulans started getting nasty.

Anyway, not even the Romulans will buy their navy ships - they still plan to take them from us, which seems like cheating to me - we took 'em fair and square (legal too, per the international piracy laws).

So what to do?

Well, we've had a bunch of imaginative people working on that & contacting everybody they know to check on possibilities & something has come up.

The Lyran Democratic Republic has made us an offer. See, the LDR is a small country at the 3-way intersection between the Lyran kingdom, the Hydran Kingdom and the Klingon Empire.

Now somehow the LDR manages diplomacy between those 3 ok, but everybody has been having hostile probes in their areas by Andromedans (we don't know what they call themselves, but we know they are from the Andromeda Galaxy, so we call them Andromedans.)

And apparently the Andromedans have decided the LDR is about the right size to pick on in a more serious way.

Well most empires have enough ships to fight off the Andromedans, even with their very strange and different technology, but the LDR is a little light in that respect.

So they want to hire us as guards or mercenaries against the Andromedans.

Now it'll take a fair chunk of our savings to gear up for that (mostly in new crew salaries & training, since not many of the captured Romulan ships need repair: one BattleHawk hulk is repairable, though you wouldn't think it to look at it - it looks like a burnt-out wreck), but it's the only offer we've had, and it turns out that being mercenaries pays pretty well, with bonuses in advance too (as well as for various things like winning battles), so we're going for it.

The crew issue was negotiable, but I want our own crews in them. That way the ships stay ours. I don't know the LDR very well, but I know governments in general think that 'might makes right', which means that since they have troops and ships, they can do whatever they want.

And in most cases that is sadly true.

Sure some of them pretend, when it's convenient, to follow laws. But when it comes down to it 'the gloves come off' and they do whatever they want.

So our ships stay ours if they have our crews in them. But our ships with anybody else's crews in them are only ours as long as those crews & the folks they report to are willing to still call them ours.

As always when we get new ships, we're taking core crews from among our existing folks. New hires get fit in around that, after being vetted by Salik (boy is he busy just now - I'm glad he's still around to play Lie Detector for us, now especially).

And new crew members are flocking in from all over (partly because we pay well & our employees are tax-free - we don't tax 'em & we're not based in areas that governments control & can tax).

We're getting lots of Kzinti, who love to fight, plus Gorns who are nearby, & all the races from the Federation.

We get a few Romulans who want to live free of their oppressive government.

We get some Hydrans, though not so many since they have to spend part of their time in spacesuits - see they breathe methane not oxygen. We have sections of the ship for them where the atmosphere is methane & others visiting have to wear spacesuits. The nice part is that doing so clears out any vermin in that section, so we're looking into doing that on a rotating basis, or maybe to the whole ship from time to time.

We don't get any Lyrans, since they inevitably fight with the Kzinti.

Nor do we have any Klingons - they do not work well with others.

And Tholians are too reclusive to even consider it - they deal with almost nobody (except maybe some Orions, plus accepting gifts from the Federation.).

So we'll be naming these new ships as they come online, though none have yet - sure, the Snipe-B and the SparrowHawk-D already had their interlocks broken & so are usable, plus a SkyHawk and another Snipe-B now (and we're almost there getting the cloaking codes broken too), but none of them have full crews yet & even once they do it will take a little training time to get up to speed.

The LDR know that & are either nice enough or desperate enough to hire us anyway (though they Can see that we have the ships & are rapidly getting them outfitted and usable).

So for the naval ships we're following long tradition & just like, in ancient days, HMS stood for His Majesty's Ship, IJN stood for Imperial Japanese Navy, and USS stood for United States Ship (and now Stands for United Star Ship in the Federation), We're calling our military vessels TJSN for Trader Joe Space Navy. That doesn't include the Q-ships or tug - we still need them running cargoes.

Now the LDR would like us to commit our Navy as it becomes available - a ship or two at a time. But I've read, and Captain Connors strenuously agrees, that doing so is always a bad idea.

The quote he uses is "Boot them, don't spatter them", which apparently a famous German general used to like to say.

It means concentrate your force & hit them as hard as you can, don't do a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

In fact, we even have experience with that - the Romulans have been 'spattering' us & that has worked out very well for us, as far as not losing any ships & capturing some of theirs. But they have vast fleets & if they ever try concentrating them against us, they could crush us pretty easily.

Captain Connors illustrated with a story from his dad's time in the navy.

It seems there were 7 cruisers on each side of the border & they'd been skirmishing ineffectively for a good while, mostly one on one.

Then Connors' dad came on the scene & took a risk - quickly and maintaining as much surprise as he could, he gathered 5 of his cruisers while the other 2 sped around being seen, so things wouldn't look any different - it would still appear to have a string of cruisers along the border.

But the moment he had the 5 concentrated, he attacked the enemy cruiser at one end of the line & then proceeded on up the line. Now in one on one fights you often get both ships damaged & none destroyed before they disengage. But these 5 on one fights went really quickly & were decisive - the one never had a chance & the 5 didn't even take damage - their shields could handle it all.

So he went up the line in one 5 on 1 fighter after another, just as fast as he could go to give them no time to concentrate.

Of course by the time he got near the far end of the line, they did start concentrating, but he brought in his other 2 cruisers & the other side had already lost so many that it didn't matter. Even at the final fight they couldn't get enough ships together to challenge his 7.

So by booting them good, he broke a long stalemate & won a major victory with no significant losses.

It's a motivational story. We're planning to have our Navy stick to that principle & "boot them" whenever we can.

In a way, we're already doing that, as far as boarding actions go: most cruisers carry 8 boarding parties while our smallest ship carries 30 boarding parties, so boarding actions are a lot like that 5 on 1 cruiser fight in the story - quick and decisive.

Captain's Log, Stardate thinking about getting a new log machine.

So I keep trying to think up ways to trade with Solos and Refuge, now that they have Romulan Garisons & Romulan Navy ships in orbit & I just keep coming up dry.

At best, every delivery would be a fight & they have a lot more ships to fight with. Plus you don't make money on trade when you regularly get your ships damaged or destroyed, as we would if we tried it.

The best I could think of was a flotilla of Pseudo-Fighter variants.

See, they have a type with few weapons, but some cargo capacity instead. They'd be fast enough to run some types of blockades, plus you can't tell at a distance that they have fewer weapons, so most ships they'd encounter would steer clear, as 6 PF's can rip up most ships.

But even that wouldn't work with the Romulans actually having troops and bases on the planets, plus defenses in orbit.

Sigh.

They've been good trading partners too. I hate to lose them.

Maybe the Romulans will calm down and back off eventually.

Captain's Log, Stardate Whiz Kid time

The Whiz Kids (what we call our group of techies trained by Sparky), led by Vindair, another Romulan skilled with tech stuff (like Sparky but not as good), did eventually manage to put our fighter-sized Gatling Phasers into the Romulan Gladiator 2 fighters we bought.

The fighters' nose looks a little funny now, but they work. We're calling them Gladiator-2G (G for Gatling).

But that's not all - they kept puttering around with stuff and found something pretty neat.

See, Romulan Fighters (and Gorn too, plus big ships with Plasma F Launchers, but we're talking small ones here) use stasis boxes to store Plasma Torpedoes, ready to fire (only type F, others have too much energy & can't be stored, even in Stasis).

And between the Stasis box & launcher combo & it's the launcher that takes up most of the space.

Now Plasma F's are really nice because they're always ready when you need them - you just charge them up & store 'em in that box, ready to launch whenever you need them, even weeks later.

The bigger types of Plasma Torpedoes (Type G, Type S, and Type R, from smallest to biggest) don't come in as handy, since you have to charge them up when you want to use them, not before. And they take a while to charge - you can shoot 3 times from every Phaser 1 or Disruptor for every shot you get from Plasma Torpedoes.

So the Whiz Kids have been poking around in the captured Romulan ships, helping repair them, but mostly learning stuff so we can run them at their best, and they said that the Plasma Torpedo launchers have a little space left - enough to cram in the teeny little stasis box from a fighter.

Now we have a bunch of those around anyway, since we salvage any we run across (Pirates like them) & even buy a few.

They're great for keeping vegetables & medicine fresh, for example, since no time passes in stasis boxes.

So we're going to put a stasis box on each Plasma Torpedo Launcher we have.

That way even a type R or S launcher can start any fight ready to spit out a Type F Torpedo - even while it charges a bigger Torpedo.

Vindar got eloquent about just how it will work - using the switching mechanism they already have in place (it's to launch a decoy called a Pseudo-Plasma Torpedo or PPT) to switch between the real Torpedo, the PPT (as it already does), and our stasis box, plus how most of the launcher is the swiveling launch tube, the energy excitation matrix & the force-bottle generator to keep the Torpedo intact while it travels, & those take up lots of space but don't fit too tightly together, leaving some gaps & so on.

But basically, in and around all that bulky stuff, we can fit a fighter-sized stasis box no problem.

So we will.

Having a Torpedo ready to go, even a little one, makes a big difference - a big enough one that I was even considering (before this anyway) switching out any Type G launchers for Type F, since G is only a little more effective than F at best & only at certain ranges even then.

Upgrading the Battlestation to a StarBase is proceeding according to schedule at least (so far the additions are still just skeletal - bare beams & framework, bundles of wiring, & such-like - no usable areas yet).

I'd stop it and save the money, since things are getting tight, but for two things.

First, it's already paid for and not refundable.

Second, if worse comes to worse, a completed StarBase has a lot more equity in it than either a Battlestation or a work in progress.

I'd hate to sell it, but we could probably survive that if it came to it.

Captain's Log, Stardate not again.

Ok, no more wishful thinking.

The situation is bad & only going to get worse.

The signs were there before, but today made it obvious.

So there we are, doing business as normal (though not much of it), when a Romulan fleet uncloaks and opens fire at our Battlestation with Plasma Torpedoes.

They didn't say anything other than "surrender or die" & then cloaked again right after firing.

They picked the range carefully too - Range 10 - where their Plasma Torpedoes would do maximum damage, but our Phaser 4's, in the limited time they had, wouldn't do as much (enough to knock down the main shield of one ship & burn through its armor - they're an old enough design they still have armor).

So we held our Phaser 4 fire until either the ships or Plasma Torpedoes got closer.

Well the ships just stayed in place as they re-cloaked, so we ended up shooting the Plasma Torpedoes to reduce their warhead strength, and it's a good thing we could do that, since we needed every bit of help we could get.

We didn't bother firing drones - you can see ships start to fade out as they begin to cloak, so we could tell right away that's what they were doing, and we knew any drones would have just lost tracking and wandered off when the Romulans finished re-cloaking, which would be long before the drones got there.

Ok, let me start from the beginning & give it in sequence, as we pieced it together later.

We have 15 Pseudo Fighters operating from the base, & usually one flotilla (that's 6) is out patrolling.

Some cloaked Romulan ships were near enough the base to watch & see when we sent out our flotilla.

Then at the right time, when the patrol was far off in one direction, we get a distress call from the other direction 'from' one of the few free traders that still come out here to trade with us (and with whom we still have a contract to come to his aid), and saying he's being pursued by Orions & could we please come help him.

So since there were 2 Orion slavers chasing him, we sent out the remaining 9 PF's to help. 9 PF's could handle those 2 Orions.

Well it turns out that the Romulans had hired these Orions to help with their attack, by causing a distraction this way.

When our PF's got far enough away from the base all 3 ships (the 2 Orions and the free trader, who, it turns out, the Orions had actually captured long before 'he' sent the distress message to us) turned tail and ran.

And at the same time, 4 King Eagles, 2 War Eagles, and a Monitor de-cloaked at range 10 from our base, launched Plasma Torpedoes and re-cloaked, as I said.

Now that's 7 Plasma Torpedo Type R, 2 Type S, and 2 Type F, coming at us, and we had no warning, so no shuttles are prepared and charged up as Wild Weasels to go distract all those Torpedoes, plus no fighters are launched & so on.

But we did have Phasers warmed up (that's been policy for a long time, plus we've been on alert since the Romulans started causing problems).

So of course we started launching fighters as fast as we could, while waiting for the Plasma Torpedoes to come into optimal range so we could shoot them to weaken the warheads.

Now fighters have a bit of a delay after launching before they can fire, but that lovely Hydran technology came to our aid there - they build launch tubes into their ships (and carrier pods, which is what we were using here), so all of our fighters got out in plenty of time & started moving towards the Romulans.

We also launched shuttles (Lots of shuttles). See, every one of those captured Romulan ships we'd been getting ready for use had a few shuttles (and shuttles are not a system disabled by interlocks).

And each shuttle has a Phaser 3 which it can use to weaken the warhead of an incoming Torpedo.

Those shuttles plus the ones from the base all launched and boy was that an amazing sight - a cloud of 80 shuttles and fighters puffed out from the base (like an open bag of feathers when a child jumps on it) in no time flat.

But the shuttles can do more than weaken the Torpedoes, and we were counting on that. They can hold Boarding Parties too & we loaded them full.

Some of them are what they call Ground Assault Shuttles - they came with the Troopships, plus we had a few for general use, though we call them Boarding Shuttles, since we don't plan to assault any ground targets.

They hold more troops and have useful things like magnetic grapples for clinging to the hull of a ship.

Now for context, let me say this - a Phaser 1 (the standard go-to weapon on most ships) at a common combat range (range 4) averages just under 4 points of damage (ships usually mount several).

A Photon Torpedo at any range does 8 damage.

Close-in, all weapons do a lot more, but that gives you an idea.

And a Snipe-B frigate, would take 31 damage points to destroy every system and space in the ship (plus 20 to burn through its shield), though ships usually blow up when they've taken something like 85 to 90 percent of their maximum.

Ok, the Snipe is a bad example, being a skinny little ship. So take those SparrowHawk light Cruisers for example. It would take 68 points of damage to burn every system in them, plus 30 for the shield.

So, now that you have an idea, let me say that each one of those Type R Torpedoes, at range 10, does 50 damage points. The Type S aren't far behind at 30 each. Even the Type F Torps are doing 15 each at that range.

So here we are with 440 points of damage coming at us and guaranteed to hit (Plasma Torpedoes never miss unless you use a Wild Weasel).

Worse, we can see that these Torpedoes (except the Type F, which can't do that) are all the Enveloping kind - that's just a different way to charge them up, but it does double damage and engulfs the target, damaging all 6 shields equally.

That makes them a lot harder to shoot down too.

Now it takes only 151 damage to burn every system in our Battlestation, counting the core & the 3 Docking Wings. The pods bring that up by another 159, to 310 total, plus 45 to burn through each shield.

So you can see we're looking at utter ruin here...Except for those wonderful Hydran fighters.

So the Plasma Torpedoes come in as the fighters and shuttles go out.

Since the Torpedoes are targeted on the base rather than the fighters, they can shoot the Torps at point blank range for maximum effect.

Well, for drama, I'm going to withhold the total they did for a sec.

So the fighters and shuttles shoot the Torpedoes, then move to where the cloaked ships are (when they de-cloaked to fire, we briefly got lock-ons to each one & even after they re-cloaked we could still tell where they were).

Then when the Torpedoes got in close the base let loose with its own Phasers - both the big Phaser 4's (which average 18 damage each up close) and the Gatling Phasers whose whole purpose is damaging things up close & average 4 damage each shot at the closest range (though the timing didn't work out for that & they had to shoot a touch earlier).

So the base, letting lose everything it has on those Torpedoes, did 272 damage to the Torpedoes, reducing the warhead strength by half that (that's how it works - 2 for 1).

Oh, and 2 captor mines we had (remember those - they're armed with weapons instead of explosives) shot Phaser 2's at the Torps and did 8 damage between them.

Now 272 is an impressive number, but let me tell you what the fighters did.

We'd launched 36 fighters with Gatling Phasers and 44 shuttles with 1 Phaser 3 apiece.

The shuttles did 169 damage, but the fighters did 552.

We had to check the sensor logs twice to make sure, since that number is totally outside the realm of most battles.

Anyway, all told that's 1001 damage done to the Torpedoes, which reduced their warheads by an even 500 points between them.

But that left 350 to burn the base.

Well, here's where the Enveloping part costs them - that 350 is split evenly among all 6 of our shields.

Now we dumped all the power we had into reinforcing those, and even drained our batteries to help. But that only took another 16 points off. The shields themselves took another 270 before they all burned off.

The remaining 64 points melted some of the new framework for the upgrade, took out about a third of our repair facilities, plus some cargo space (one benefit of slow trade is that it was mostly empty), a fighter bay, 2 Gatling Phasers, some batteries, and a transporter.

We'd survived, but had no shields left.

We were hurt.

We were wide open for a followup attack.

And, given the cloaked ships were just sitting there, it's a sure bet they were charging up more Torpedoes to finish up off.

Well you never saw folks scramble faster to get a couple Wild Weasels set up and ready. We had to launch each out of the cargo bay door of the bay they were stored in, since we'd gotten excited and launched everything in the shuttle bays, but there was just enough time to do it.

Now apparently the Romulans had not known how many fighters we had, or they'd have sent another ship, even if it took longer for it to join this fleet & so delayed the attack.

True, they'd been watching us, but I guess we never flew more than a dozen or so fighters at a time. Not from the base anyway & the ships that had fighters weren't here during this attack.

So the Romulans thought they had it all figured out.

They even had a surprise for us.

See, when the enemy fleet was ready to fire again & started to de-cloak, two extra ships also de-cloaked - they'd brought along two KRM Mauler cruisers to handle our fighters.

They didn't de-cloak the first time because they wanted to catch us by surprise.

They had no Plasma Torpedoes that could fire anyway (the Mauler weapon takes almost the whole ship, and their only Plasma F's are rear-facing).

So they waited until our fighters were close, and then de-cloaked very slightly before the rest of the fleet (though not so early that they'd have to work without backup) so they could try to clear out our fighters before our fighters cleared out their fleet.

Well, our pilots are sharp & reacted quickly - they split this way and that to avoid the very narrow firing arcs the Maulers have.

Any fighter that a Mauler turned to fire at, if it couldn't dodge to the side to get out of the arc, turned tail and moved away, to reduce the damage they'd take.

And fighters that were well outside its firing arc moved in close to take out the Mauler.

So the Maulers didn't do as well as they could, but they still crippled 17 fighters (tough call whether to kill fighters or stop at crippling them – they went for the cripple which often makes pilots turn & run & at least costs them some weapons & speed) & then it was our turn.

Things got confusing then, as everything happened at once – lots of moving and firing.

But in short, four of our fighters fired Fusion Beams at a WarEagle aiming to kill it (and did damage it pretty well), while the rest fired (2 or 3 at each ship) at the King Eagles, Maulers, and Monitor, just enough to drop their shields (we damaged them a little inside too, but nobody is perfect), on all but the Monitor (its shield got knocked most of the way down), but that took every Fusion beam we had available.

Sure, the fighters have a 2nd Fusion shot before they run out, but there's a little delay & the Romulans would get to fire before that.

The fighters held their Gatling Phasers for shooting at Torpedoes (only Phasers can weaken the warhead on Plasma Torpedoes, which is why they didn't use their Fusion Beams for that earlier).

Our base fired Phaser 4's at the other WarEagle and took down its shields as well, while also finishing the shield on that Monitor.

Now the shuttles all fired at that WarEagle with their Phaser 3's & between them, managed to completely gut it (from that point on, it only drifted).

Then the shuttles did what they set out to do - they docked with every airlock, cargo door, & shuttle bay door available on those ships (the ones with a shield down - you have to knock a shield down for this to work).

Some even landed (using that magnetic grapple) on the surface of their target ship & blasted open a new entry way.

Then they disgorged a whole bunch of Boarding Parties into those ships.

About this time tor Romulans finished de-cloaking and fired both Plasma Torps and Phasers.

Mostly they fired Phasers at our fighters (they couldn't fire at the shuttles, since they'd all landed or docked & so couldn't be hit unless they hit their own ships too).

Now fighters, between them, can soak up a lot of damage. It takes 10 damage to kill one of our fighters, though 2/3 of that will cripple it (basically that means make it go slow and lose the use of any weapons but Phasers).

Well, The King Eagles, WarEagle, and Monitor fired their R Torps at the base, but the Monitor had charged their S Torpedoes in the way that's called "shotgun" which splits the Torpedo into a bunch of Type F Torpedoes (5 for each R, 3 for each S, 2 for each G), and fired all these F Torps at our fighters (plus some that hadn't been in the right fire arc to shoot at the base), well, we'd been expecting something like that, so each fighter blasted the Torpedo that was after it. That reduced the strength of the warheads just enough that our fighters survived, but between that & the Phaser fire, all of them but one was crippled (that pilot, named Gregg, can't stop bragging, and while he's good, Maulers and Plasma Torpedoes never miss, so it seems more like luck than skill).

I guess the Romulans had counted up how many shuttles we launched versus how many we could & figured we had nothing left, so couldn't have a Wild Weasel. That'd be why they fired at the base instead of finishing off some fighters. But we did have a Wild Weasel ready & it worked like a charm, so the base was spared further damage.

As for the rest of the battle...

Well, we cut it close, and those Boarding shuttles sure did help with their extra capacity, but we did manage to take all 4 King Eagles, both KRM Maulers, and the Monitor.

That left only the last WarEagle, which had been damaged enough it couldn't re-cloak – it just didn't have enough energy-producing systems left.

It did try to turn tail and run, but we gave him a choice – surrender or die. Well he saw all those fighters on him & knew what they could do, so he surrendered.

When we got on board we were surprised just how little still worked, so it's no wonder they surrendered.

Anyway, we towed in the captured ships and even the WarEagle hulk (to see if it could be fixed or at least sold for scrap).

We're not looking seriously into whether or not we can repair the WarEagles, since that'd take funds we can't spare right now.

The WhizKids were happy to get their ROMs though. See, the KingEagle is just an upgraded WarEagle, so having examples of both to compare should give them enough known similarities and differences to make it easier to break the ROMs.

And they were very interested in the Maulers.

They're built on Klingon cruisers.

See, the Romulans sometimes buy ships from the Klingons & convert them, & this is one example. It seems these 2 were upgraded by the Klingons before they sold them to the Romulans, who then both converted them and also did their standard fleet upgrades to them as well.

So they're pretty good ships.

And neither is damaged, so they should be ready by the time we can get crews for them.

And new crews are generally coming along – Captain Connors turns out to be good at training as well.

But this puts us in a state of emergency – the Romulans have lots of ships & can easily send enough next time they get the urge to take us out. And I expect this event hasn't made them any happier with us.

Soooo,

Big sigh.

We can't stay here. We met and discussed it, just to be fair to everyone, but the staff agrees (some very fervently) that we need to leave.

So we called Stumpy, our tug, back asap, and the pseudo-fighters aren't going back on patrol again - they're staying close to protect the base.

Meanwhile we got our repair bays as busy as possible, first getting minimal shields working again, then repairing our repair capacity, then the fighters, the rest of the shields, then everything else.

That seemed the best approach to be ready for combat as fast as possible, in case we need to be.

We also broke out the modified Gladiator 2 fighters (Gladiator 2G remember?) we had in cargo space, plus the unmodified ones (not yet modified actually - it's in the to-do list) we captured on those ore haulers, so we have at least some fighters ready to fight even before the others are repaired (which won't take long).

Well, there were a ton of calls to make and arrangements to plan and organize. Our local trade contracts are canceled or sold (there is a shipping conglomerate with Romulan government contacts that's willing to give it a try) or whatever else we could manage.

We sent Sopwith Camel under Captain Brown to go to the spot where we're looking to move the base to, and start scouting out trade opportunities.

He's good at that.

We sent Albatross under Captain Albrecht with him for support.

Our other Q-ships are mostly headed down to the new trading routes we've been setting up in the Kzinti Neutral Zone. Sure that's more capacity than those routes need at this point. But they have to do something & just having them there should drum up a lot of business.

I doubt they'll be idle.

They're traveling there through Federation territory, staying well clear of the Romulan border.

Of yah, the Feds... Their reaction to this? They announced that they "deeply deplore the actions of the Romulan Empire", blah blah, blah. They're not doing anything.

So even while still making calls (and we'll probably be making those for months to catch up), we wasted no time in getting out. The moment Stumpy got back, we turned off the Positional Stabilizers, hitched up Stumpy & started off.

We're going to where the TJSN (our mercenary fleet) is planning to go (Captain Connors says he may have a small task force ready to go soon).

Mostly.

They're contracted to support the Lyran Democratic Republic against the Andromedans who are harassing them.

We will setup shop in the neutral zone at the junction between the Lyran and Hydran Kingdoms & the LDR, which is also pretty close to the Klingon Empire.

Why a Neutral Zone?

Well the name obviously.

We can't be 'Trader Joes of the Neutral Zone' otherwise.

Nah, just kidding.

It's because we don't want to be subject to a government & all the problems that brings (taxes & regulations etc) and because the only government near here which isn't likely to simply decide they own us is the Federation & they have some very restrictive weapons laws. Our weapons have come in handy too many times over the years for us to consider letting them go. As they say, when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away. Or in the case of navy warships, hours or days away, most of the time.

There was some discussion about whether to go there, or where most of the Q-ships are going.

If we go to the LDR Neutral Zone, we're there to fix the TJSN ships if need be, and save money doing that for ourselves rather than hiring it done.

And there's probably more trade opportunity there.

For our kind of trade at least.

See, in a way, we thrive on conflict. In a nice peaceful place with good relations, normal freighters make a better profit. But in a dangerous place such as the Neutral Zone between a couple powers that don't much like each-other, few companies are willing to trade because it's dangerous.

That's where we come in.

And the spot by the LDR sounds perfect: the Lyrans and Hydrans don't get along, nor do the Hydrans and Klingons. And the LDR is a wild card & could go to war with any of the 3 if they make a misstep.

Then add in the Andromedans and frequent piracy by Orions.

The situation in general is volatile enough we should have tons of trading opportunities well suited for us.

We've heard that the situation between the Lyrans and Hydrans is especially tense right now, and diplomacy is poor, but it doesn't sound too bad & should make good trade opportunities for us.

The upgrade to StarBase should be completed about the time we arrive at the new spot, despite the damage. It's nice that it was insured against battle damage, though I can't take credit for foresight there – it's standard in all the upgrade contracts, since bases are usually in dangerous areas.

Still, it came in handy, since most of our sources of income have shrunk or ceased completely (though we still have the Q-ships working for us, and we still build ships for sale - little free traders & cargo ships mostly - for now, we're using parts which the repair business had on hand for new construction), and none of our expenses have shrunk or ceased.

For as long as I can remember, the stars I can see out the viewports of the base have stayed still. Now they're moving.

Weird.

Don't get me wrong, I've spent a lot of time in regular starships too.

In fact I came up the same way Grandpaw and Paw did, and that Young Trader Joe my son is doing. That is, we all spent a while working in various other shipping companies, to get experience and other perspectives. You learn some things not to do, as well as what works best. Plus you make some good contacts.

Still, as I look out the viewport, I can see the base covered in soot. It's like it's dressed all in black and mourning.

That's appropriate, given our losses.


	6. Chapter 6

Captain's Log, Stardate this is interesting...

So we weren't sure what to do with the Romulan crews we captured. We used to dump them on Solos but we can't go there now – not without a major battle.

Well, just like I offered their ships back to them for a price, I offered the crews back to the Romulan Empire.

For a price of course.

I never expected them to say yes. I was just going through the motions, more or less. It's probably an aspect of their pride, but they are willing to pay to get their crews back.

Nice.

Now they made a few crazy suggestions, but there's no way I'm going to trust them and take any of those.

No.

But we did come up with a way that'll work.

See, we'll drop off the Romulan crews on a small Federation world & synchronize the dropoff with the Romulans making a bank transfer to a bank account we have in the Federation.

Now mostly we do our own banking, but sometimes you need an account that's easy for trading partners to use & this is it.

So we'll get the money & the Romulan Embassy on a minor Federation planet will get their crews.

It's a boon to us – it removes a security concern and gives us some much needed cash (or will, when the swap is done).

See, expenses have exceeded income & we're steadily dipping into savings. Still, we expect income to increase soon, as our ships get trading again.

Now I know it sounds crazy & it is a calculated risk, but I dipped into savings a bit. We should have enough savings even so.

See, the half-dozen odd Romulan ships that are usable again (that is, we broke their interlocks) need some upgrades before they go into battle, so we dipped into savings for that.

Mainly that's just replacing their Phaser 3's with Gatling Phasers (and some drone launchers on ships that has a lot of Phaser 3's), adding our little Stasis boxes as I mentioned before & shoehorning in at least 2 barracks and 1 mine rack on every ship, plus at least enough drones for 2 scatter-pack launches (which they are to keep loaded and ready at all times).

We'll be doing that to all Romulan ships (should I say Former Romulan ships? Maybe Romulan-Built Ships? Bah – you know what I mean) as we get them ready.

Why do we need to upgrade them?

Well Grandpaw used to say "never go to a fight with only 3 shots in your six-gun".

Yah, he was into a lot of really old stuff.

But it means that, in a fight, be as prepared as you possibly can be. What matters is having more than the other guy. Two evenly matched boxers will beat each other up badly. But if one can get a big advantage somehow, he will win quickly while taking little or no damage.

That's what we want.

We have no interest in taking unnecessary damage.

Captain's Log, Stardate unimportant.

Well, Sopwiths Buffalo and Hippo are done, and we immediately sent them off (we will contact them with the cloaking codes when we get them - they don't need to be here for that) to join Sopwith Camel and Albatross at the spot we hope to make our new home.

The 2 ships that are already there are getting some trade routes figured out, and some scouting done.

All that is very helpful, but it's been surprisingly annoying – See Captain Brown has frequent disagreements with Captain Albrecht.

That's manageable – they're both good men, and it's differences in preferred approach rather than a clear right or wrong.

But Captain Brown also seems prone to trouble. He's been attacked by pirates almost every single day he's been there.

Apparently that Neutral Zone has been the happy hunting ground for a clan of Orion Pirates known as the Crimson Barony.

Their standard operating procedure seems to be ordering folks to abandon ship, then capture the ship and either capture the shuttles the crew are in, or shoot them, or leave them to make their own way as best they can.

They're a nasty bunch.

So because of that approach he hasn't been able to board and capture any – he's had to use surprise and blast them instead. His ship is well enough armed to do that (surprise does wonders too), but he keeps getting damaged.

So while he gets some valuable salvage, he keeps spending most of the proceeds getting fixed up at LDR or Hydran bases.

We normally do better than that, though I can't point to any specific actions he took that are wrong – he just seems to have bad luck.

Captain Albrecht, on the other hand, seems to be lucky or something – he gets attacked almost as often, but hasn't taken any damage yet.

So the wrecked enemy ships he hauls in & sells for salvage are making us some money (after bonuses for him and his crew of course).

We get reports that our ships down in Area 2 (that's what we're calling the new trade routes in the Kzinti Neutral Zone by the Lyran, Wyn, and Klingon borders) are also having their share of pirate encounters.

The way that typically goes is our ship will pretend to surrender & go along with the pirate demands to let it get in close, then blast it without warning & sell the wreckage.

The pirates there have also been really cautious about docking and boarding, so we haven't captured many.

Those we do capture, we sell to the Kzinti.

I'd say the extra income helps, but really it isn't 'extra' - it's normal operation for our q-ships & so expected.

Captain's Log, Stardate Whee

Well today was a great day – the TJSN (Trader Joe Space Navy) was born today.

It isn't in great shape yet, but it lives.

So we got the interlocks broken, the upgrades done & the crews (mostly) trained for 7 ships: 3 Snipe-B Frigates, a Battlehawk Frigate, 2 SkyHawk Destroyers (1 Type A for general combat & a Type G for Troop transport), and the SparrowHawk-E Light Cruiser (Pseudo-Fighter tender type).

For its PF's, we didn't even try to break the interlocks yet.

We'll get to that.

But why bother on them when we have a bunch of Romulan-Built PF's that we captured carried as cargo in the ore haulers (remember they were being hauled to Tweedle-Dum & the others).

They never had their interlocks engaged, so we'll just use those.

Why them instead of Hydran PF's?

It's because Romulan PF's can cloak & Captain Connors wanted that flexibility. Not that they can yet – but we'll break the codes soon & then they can.

Of course we changed out their Phaser 3 for a Gatling & added a mine rack, to try to enhance their effectiveness (A regular Romulan PF is called a Centurion, so we're calling these Centurion G).

We'll be doing that to all Romulan PF's we deploy.

And we'll deploy a lot, since all Romulan ships are getting Mechanical Linkages (Mech links for hauling PF's) on each of their tractor beams. Sure that doesn't make them full PF tenders (they can't repair PF's for one thing) but it'll help.

And the SparrowHawk-E got 2 of its 4 scout sensors swapped out for Plasma-F launchers – we couldn't see any use for that many scout sensors, but we can sure use the Torpedoes.

Anyway, the 7 little ships took off for the Lyran Democratic Republic today.

Captain Connors plans to finish their crew training on the way, and to be cautious until the crews prove themselves ready.

I keep calling him 'Captain' Connors, since I'm so used to that. But being in charge of a task force (small fleet almost), he has of course been promoted to Commodore.

I'll try to remember to call him that.

Speaking of names, we went ahead and named the ships that entered service. In keeping with Grandpaw's tradition for military ships like the tug, we wanted a word that was descriptive of its appearance.

And since they're small & thin (the frigates especially)...

We named the Snipe-B's Teeny, Tiny, and Itsy-Bitsy.

The BattleHawk is named Mini.

The SkyHawk Destroyers are named Scrawny and Scraggly (that's the troop transport one).

And the SparrowHawk is named Skinny.

When they arrive, we'll get a bonus from the LDR (for showing up, though there's some lawyer-word for it officially – something about 'partial contract fulfillment' and 'good faith').

Whatever you call it, we need it.

Anyway, one other bit of good news today was the arrival of our last shipment of parts and materials for finishing the upgrade to StarBase.

Not that that's done – not by a long shot.

But it's nice to have all the parts on hand. The shipment also included a bunch of parts we'll need for repairing various damaged ships.

Captain Mac Andrews on the Handley Page brought the shipment in. Handley Page is going out again right away – headed into Federation Territory with the Romulan prisoners, so that transfer can take place.

But HP is going without Captain Andrews. It has a new captain now, since I finally got around to doing something that has been deserved for a while now & promoted him.

Now Commodore Andrews will work up, and then command, Task Force 2 , just as his Uncle Commodore Connors has Task Force 1.

That is, he will as soon as we get any more ships ready for it – All the ones with interlocks unlocked went off with Commodore Connors.

But at least Commodore Andrews can get his crews ready.

We're using Romulan Pseudo-fighters for training them (when they're not in the simulators), since they're similar to the bigger Romulan ships in many ways. That's no small task & will keep him busy.

Captain's Log, Stardate Whew not again.

Well we've been traveling down the Neutral zone as if it's a road, since the Federation won't let "a swarm of heavily-armed ruffians" (they mean us) travel through their territory.

Sure we have licenses for that, such as can be obtained anyway. That covers Q-ships, but not our base nor our captured ships etc.

So because we have to use the Neutral Zone like a road, that means we are staying close to the Romulan border.

Well, they took that as an opportunity and tried again.

See, we're moving along, slow & steady, since tugs with loads like this aren't fast & then suddenly a Romulan Fleet uncloaks with their weapons all ready to go.

They'd gotten ahead of us & watched, then timed the whole thing well so we didn't have a single thing ready to fight back.

The fighters were landed & the PF's docked, as were the captured ships (none of which were usable yet anyway - not the ones we still have here anyway).

Luckily they were a little less bloodthirsty then the last group - they called us up and started talking about our surrender.

Of course it was accompanied by threats that if we launched anything, fired anything, raised shields (normally they stay up at minimal levels not battle levels or "full") or even routed any power to our weapons, they'd fire & wipe us out.

Now given the delay after launching fighters or PF's before they can fire, this was a valid threat.

They also gloated that they knew the base couldn't fire with its positional stabilizers off.

So other than Stumpy the tug, we were helpless. And even Stumpy was in a bad state - it carries less weapons than a heavy cruiser, so it depends mostly on its fighters & they had the same launch difficulties the other fighters have.

And the Romulans brought a serious fleet this time.

Apparently it bothered them to lose the entire KingEagle task force without any word, and it concerned them enough to send a tougher group this time.

This group was led by a Dreadnought (it turned out to be a Romulan Optimized Condor, or ROC), and contained a KRC Command Cruiser (that's a Klingon Command Cruiser sold to the Romulans and converted. A command cruiser is a heavy cruiser, a little heavier than that, plus some flag bridge for admirals and such to control task forces from), a KRT Tug (another one they bought from the Klingons - they brought it to tow the base back in case they had to blow up our tug), a KillerHawk BattleCruiser and a FireHawk-K Heavy Cruiser, a SparrowHawk-E pseudofighter tender, a SparrowHawk-B carrier, a SparrowHawk-G troop transport, 2 Skyhawk-A destroyers, and 4 BattleHawk Frigates, with a dozen Centurion Pseudo-Fighters already launched & ready, and 16 Gladiator fighters to back them up.

So I'm dictating this from a Romulan Prison or course...

Nah, I just kidding.

Here's what happened.

Actually, Commodore Andrews happened to be there on the bridge with me when we took the call.

He left the bridge, to get out of the pickup & so be unseen & unheard by the Romulans, but immediately called me on my private line which goes to my earpiece, which the Romulans couldn't hear.

He said "Delay them as long as you can – I have an idea for how to wreck them, but give me some time. Negotiate. Look defeated and nonthreatening. Negotiate anything & everything & nitpick the details. Treat all options as if they're open to bargaining to drag it out, just buy time doing it."

So I went with that (even a small chance is better than losing everything & going to Romulan prison) & started out by telling the Romulans that clearly the station was worth more to them captured than destroyed & so was our other equipment, so if they'd spare our lives & set us free, plus give us our savings, we could talk about surrendering instead of going down fighting & making them destroy it all.

Well that got them started & we had lots of fine points to dicker over. Plus they took some time gloating over their victory too.

I discovered that as long as I could bring up points to haggle over, yet still lose the haggling, they thought they were doing well & kept it going. See, they love to win (who doesn't, but their arrogance makes it more so for them) so winning little negotiation victories was sweet to them.

And I didn't try hard to win negotiations since my goal was to delay, not get the best settlement I could.

But through the delay, they always kept their weapons ready, and we could tell they were scanning the base to make sure to notice it if we even started powering our weapons.

Well, eventually they got tired of negotiating & moved in to just take our stuff.

While I 'protested' weakly to keep up the act, the Troop ship started moving towards the base to board and capture Oz, the KRC moved and docked to take our Tug Stumpy, and the KRT moved in to take over the towing, which, coincidentally, would put it right next to Stumpy.

Now I know what you're thinking - won't they ever learn not to board our ships?

Well apparently they were ready, or thought they were, this once at least, & brought extra boarding parties on their KRC.

Extra...but not enough.

Well, that set off the show, so to speak. Once they boarded Stumpy the ruse of negotiating was over & Commodore Andrews set his plans going.

And he had planned & started a number of things. It was almost like watching an orchestra start up - all coordinated & everything.

Probably the most important is this - he had noted a few things about our fighters - that the Romulans were watching the shuttle bay doors, but had never seen our launch tubes in operation, so it probably didn't even occur to them that we even Had launch tubes (Only Hydrans use them & their kingdom is at a good distance from the Romulans).

Also he realized that they were watching for power sources (as normal) but that unpowered fighters would be too small for them to see as long as they stayed unpowered, but that there were ways they could power up quickly.

And lastly that with our Tug holding tightly to the base with tractor beams, a little more tractor beam use was unlikely to be noticed.

Just in case he added just a touch of ECM (Electronic Countermeasures) - enough to hide the tractor beam usage but not enough to be noticeable as ECM (faking or covering a power signature is trivial compared to the loud and obnoxious jamming that ECM normally does).

So he had shoved our fighters, unpowered but ready to power up quickly, out their launch tubes using tractor beams. He even began the process with the launch tubes on the other side of the base from the Romulans, so in case the worst happened & they noticed, he'd have some launched first.

But they didn't notice.

So here our fighters are, coasting along unpowered - shoved towards the Romulan fleet with what boost the Tractor Beams could give them.

They kept on that way, getting closer while I negotiated & Andrews prepared other things.

Our shuttles got loaded with boarding parties, our PF's got crewed & ready to launch - as ready as we could without the Romulans being able to tell.

And, very importantly, Mac Andrews even managed to get a couple Wild Weasels ready.

See, the Romulans were watching specifically for that, but they didn't even think to consider the docked ships, since they were obviously powered down and inert.

You can't turn on their engines without breaking the interlocks & we hadn't done that yet.

And ships with no engines have almost no energy - certainly not enough to fight with.

So after scanning them in the first place & learning that, they didn't bother to scan again.

They forgot that ships that are docked together can transfer power between them.

So we transferred power from the base to charge Wild Weasels in the docked ships.

Just in case, Commodore Andrews even set it up so that we only used battery power to charge the Wild Weasels. That made it even harder to detect.

Apparently it worked, since by the time the KRC moved to board our tug, we had 2 Wild Weasels ready, more charging, and 38 shuttles full of boarding parties ready to go out and, uh, 'party', as they like to say (they're mostly Kzinti remember - they like fighting), 15 PF's (6 of them Centurion-G's which we had out for training crews), and 48 fighters ready to light their engines & open fire with no delay.

Now we had long since repaired our battle damaged Hydran Fighters & so could have put the Gladiator fighters back into storage as cargo.

But pilots are like little children, and high-performance craft that can pull high-g turns are their toys.

Well they said they needed to keep some Gladiator fighters out to "adequately test for malfunctions in the new weapons systems" and to "conduct dissimilar practice dogfights for training purposes" but really they just weren't done playing with their toys yet.

That wasn't a big deal, so we let them, which meant that's what we had available now.

So these 48 fighters were 12 Stinger 2's from Stumpy, 12 Gladiator 2G's from Oz (those are the Gatling modified ones, remember?), and 24 plain Gladiator 2's (All the pilots wanted to play with them, so we had to keep enough out to keep the pilots happy).

So we just fire up everything & see what happens, right?

Wrong.

Commodore Andrews is a lot sneakier than that.

What would be the Romulan response to us doing that? Well to launch Plasma Torpedoes and fire Phasers of course.

Commodore Andrews is too much of a fencer to just take that on the chin, do the same back at them, & see who is more durable.

So Wave One, the 24 unmodified Gladiator 2's fire, while the rest of the fighters stay quiet for now. They fire one Plasma Torpedo Type F each, 2 at each enemy Pseudo-fighter, and then immediately start landing.

"Landing in combat, when they just started - are you crazy?", you say.

Not a bit.

See, the Romulans immediately launched their Plasma Torpedoes right back, at both the fighters and the base (the tug was docked to their KRC & they didn't want to hurt that, so it didn't get shot at).

And a whole lot of Plasma Torpedoes that was.

Now those Gladiator 2's, having fired their Plasma Torpedoes, had nothing left but one Phaser 3 each. They had a choice - they could shoot at the Plasma Torpedo that each one had coming at it, fail to weaken it enough, and die, or they could land, whereupon the Plasma Torpedo would accept, as its new target, what it landed on - the base.

And the base had Wild Weasels ready.

So Mac had timed it perfectly - the 3 carrier modules each have 2 fighter bays & so could land 2 fighters at a time, so that before the Plasma Torpedoes covered the distance, all 24 fighters the Romulans had seen, had landed & the Wild Weasel had launched and moved away from the base.

Well, there was a spectacular light show as all those Plasmas detonated (790 potential damage worth & that's with normal warheads, not enveloping), but all it cost us was one empty shuttle flying a pre-programmed route.

While those 24 Phaser 3's would have been useful to have in the fight, that wasn't an option - it was land or die.

And Commodore Connors had deck crews reloading them as fast as he could so they could re-launch and fire again.

I'll note that the Romulans would probably have staggered their Torpedo launches if they were not absolutely positive that we didn't have any Wild Weasels ready.

That's the standard approach - launch just enough Torps to make the enemy use their Wild Weasel, then do it again until they run out and die.

But they were sure, and they were Angry, so they let us have it all at once.

Now backtracking a bit, the 24 Plasma Torpedoes we sent their way were carefully targeted - we spread them out just enough for hope & fear to work for us. Each target got few enough Torpedoes to have hope they could be shot down, yet enough to fear that if they didn't shoot them down, they'd be destroyed.

So what did they do? They used all their Phasers on the Plasma Torpedoes, of course – as did the fighters, and PF's too.

They did weaken our Torpedoes enough so their pseudo-fighters just got banged up a bit – each was only about half wrecked, but see, all the weapons they have is Phasers and Plasma Torpedoes & they'd just used them all. So they had nothing left until those weapons recharged.

Now they packed quite a punch. Between their ships they had: 96 Phasers (just over half were Phaser 1), and 37 Plasma Torpedoes. And that doesn't count their fighters or PF's, which mount another 2 dozen Phaser 3, 1 dozen Phaser 1 and 24 Plasma Torpedoes between them (with the PF's able to fire another 12 after a delay but before anyone's Phasers could fire again).

Now they couldn't point all their weapons where they needed to, since some point backwards to guard the rear, and they couldn't all fire at the best range since they were spread out a bit.

Though even if they could all bear and fire point-blank, they'd still have averaged only 695 damage from Phasers, which is simply not enough to save their PF's completely from our Plasma Torpedoes.

So they did rather less than the maximum possible, and knocked our Plasma warheads down by just under half their potential, which left their PF's taking serious damage.

I'll bet they wished that PF's had shuttles & so could use Wild Weasels.

Meanwhile, Wave 2 had gone into action, and Wave 3 launched, just after the enemy committed & fired everything.

Wave 2 is the other 24 fighters, and Wave 3 is our Pseudo-fighters.

Sure the PF's have a delay after launching before they can fire, but that time will still come before the enemy can fire again & we needed every bit of oomph we could get.

Plus 5 of our PF's are the Leader type, with tractor beams and 2 barracks each, so they could board enemy ships.

Folks never put enough boarding parties on their ships – even a Dreadnought has only about 20. Sure they could fit tons more on there – they just choose not to.

They don't think there's a need.

We disagree.

Well, even our little PF Leaders have 21 boarding parties, so just 2 of them have no problem taking even a Dreadnought with plenty of safety margin, since you have to beat some internal security arrangements as well as their boarding parties.

Now nothing beats a Hydran Stinger 2 fighter for damage output if you let it get up close and personal.

Not for its size anyway.

Heck, there are even several kinds of larger units that can't match it.

It's just that good.

And we had 12 of them ready to go.

The Gladiator 2G's are not bad, but my first love will always be the Stinger 2.

Well, since they had fired, the enemy couldn't do much about us just yet - not until they recharged and were able to fire again.

And the delay was plenty of time for our guys to work theirs over, which we did very quickly.

Oh, sure, we took some damage as the whole thing turned into a confused mass of twisting turning ships, firing the rear-facing weapons they hadn't fired yet and so on. But those rear-weapons are just Phaser 3's and Plasma F's. We shot down the Plasmas (we had lots of Gatlings on hand to do so) and the Phaser 3's didn't do much to us individually, plus our pilots were maneuvering to make it hard for them to concentrate fire, so we got a lot of damaged fighters, and 3 crippled, but only 2 destroyed, while the Romulans lost their whole fleet, one way or another.

Did I mention that a Fusion Beam, at best range, does an average of 10 damage, and a Gatling Phaser at the same range does 16 damage? And here we had 24 of each available before the Romulans could shoot back. That's 624 damage we could do on average, just with our fighters.

And that's not counting the pseudo-fighters, which pack a whallop too (more than even Stinger 2's, though I hate to admit that).

And did I mention that it takes only about 100 damage to completely destroy a Romulan Light Cruiser?

Well, if the Romulans were ignorant of it, they sure learned that day.

Wave 3 pitched in too, beating up enemy fighters, PF's, and ships, and the battle was over really quickly.

Their PF's would have dished out some damage with their next Plasma F volley, but they didn't live that long – our PF's made sure of that.

And we owe big bonuses to all those on the boarding shuttles - both for their bravery in taking such a risk, and for successfully capturing some enemy ships.

The PF leaders also helped with the capturing (mainly the Dreadnought), but those are built for combat and shuttles really aren't, so the bigger risk, with the bonus, goes to the shuttle guys.

And Stumpy did her part too - largely in capturing the KRC command cruiser and then tractoring and capturing the KRT tug.

Now that was one wild and hairy battle, so our fire discipline wasn't all I would have liked.

What I mean is that normally we like to capture things as nearly intact as we can, since they're worth a lot more that way than as miscellaneous chunks of wreckage.

But in this case I'm just overjoyed that it's not us who are drifting chunks of wreckage.

So it worked out this way - we captured, mostly undamaged, the ROC Dreadnought, The KRC Command Cruiser, and the KRT Tug.

The KillerHawk, FireHawk-K, 2 of the SparrowHawks, and 3 of the BattleHawks got captured with moderate to severe battle damage.

The SparrowHawk-G troop transport could actually have taken the Base & ruined everything, so it got special attention & has extreme damage, yet may be repairable (ships are like that - all the systems can fail & yet the hull be sound enough to rebuild – heck, even most 'destroyed' systems can be repaired more cheaply than building new ones).

Both SkyHawks got completely destroyed.

And one BattleHawk got away. It had only light damage.

We also collected a lot of wrecked fighters and PF's, plus miscellaneous wreckage bits.

Waste not want not Grandpaw used to say.

And today the Romulans got reminded that the best thing to fight fighters with, is other fighters, or PF's, and they simply hadn't brought enough.

Well, since one of those BattleHawks got away, I expect they'll know better next time, if there is one, God Forbid.

We're thinking about what we can do about that.

For one thing we'll be building some more PF Leaders and keeping some PF's launched and ready at all times. The cost in parts, fuel, and wear-and-tear should be well worth it.

And we have a way to keep even more PF's ready – the captured ROC and Sparrowhawk-E are both currently unusable because the Interlocks got set, but those don't lock out the mechanical linkages that PF's use (even if they did – they're mechanical & trivial to fix or replace) & each ship has 6.

So we're using those to have another 2 flotillas ready at all times.

And Stumpy has 4 tractor beams that could receive mechanical linkages for PF's, so we have small crews over there installing them as we go.

And we'll also be having scout PF's out using their scout sensors to watch the nearest Romulan bases, since if they send another fleet, it will probably come from there. They're to watch from maximum range for safety, so they can get away if anything comes after them.

And the captured SparrowHawk-B carrier is similar – it's locked out, but not the shuttle bays (those don't get locked out so the crew isn't trapped in case they need them).

And the special shuttle bays for launching fighters aren't locked out either.

So we'll have 16 more fighters ready to go from there at need.

And we're working on upgrading more Gladiator 2 fighters to Gladiator 2 Gatlings.

It came in really handy to have all those Plasma Torpedoes tying up enemy Phaser fire. We'll be looking into ways to have Plasmas available more often.

And Vindair has one of his WhizKids working on the base's programming – see you can't fire Phaser 4's while the positional stabilizers are off (the shock would damage the base) & whoever programmed the computer was lazy & just had it turn off all weapons while the stabilizers are off.

So Vindair's guy is working on it so we can fire drones & Gatlings if need be. They don't need positional stabilizers & it was just bad programming to shut them off too.

And talking about thinking and battle planning reminds me of Commodore Andrews...

Now turning a major disaster into a major success is a pretty impressive feat, so we're promoting him to an administrative spot where he can jockey papers across a desk & never again use his real talent... Just kidding.

It always amazes me that some folks do that, but we never will.

But he does get to be our first Admiral - technically a Rear-Admiral, but we just call him Admiral. And when we get more ships ready, he will command a full fleet (with other folks to do the paper-pushing for him so he can really command).

That will be nice, since Mercenary pay increases with the force you bring: more force=more pay, within the limits of what they need.


	7. Chapter 7

Captain's Log, Stardate It's nice when things work.

So our first prisoner transfer went as planned.

Yah, I'm amazed too - you always expect there to be complications when Romulans are around.

But we got paid and they got their crews - the first set anyway, we're already haggling price about the second set from that big battle we just had. The haggling is rather hostile - I'd say they're a tad upset about losing a Dreadnought – it isn't often that that happens. Apparently we're 'nasty cheating cheaters who cheat...and do so unfairly' in their view.

Or something like that.

They didn't use those words of course – that's just my summary.

But despite the hostility, it sounds like the 2nd transfer will go through. It'll have to be at a different Federation planet than last time, since we're steadily moving & have left the first one behind us.

Oh yeah - you may be wondering what the Federation reaction was to having such a big fleet of Romulan warships in the same place where the 2 agreed neither would ever send warships (that is, the Neutral Zone).

Well, we got more Federation diplomatic whining along the lines of "hey, that's not fair - you're not supposed to do that", backed up by...nothing.

Yup, they're doing nothing at all about it.

I guess that shouldn't surprise me by now.

Anyway, looking forward to that second payoff from crew repatriation has me thinking of something... If it works out as it should, I think I have something to spend it on that should help us a lot.

We'll see.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, plus there's tons of things to check on for it.

Meanwhile we heard about a pretty unusual battle down in Area 2 - the Neutral Zone at the junction of Kzinti/Lyran/Wyn/Klingon territories. Things are pretty busy down there generally:

The Lyrans are pretty hostile by default.

The Wyn partner with the Orion pirates in shipbuilding and some other things, so there are often Orions around.

The Kzinti sometimes get rogue captains or clans who will go pick fights for their own amusement.

And the Klingons often get rogue captains acting unpredictably out of sheer bloodymindedness.

So we regularly get combat actions there. Mostly these are unremarkable – the usual Frigate-sized or Destroyer-sized opponents. Several varieties of Orion Ship are in that range & we face them all from time to time, plus unreliable captains, of whatever race, are usually in the smaller ships like that.

Those battles go along 1 of 2 lines: They either are confident enough to board us (how can you loot us if you don't board?) and we capture them, since we have lots more troops than most folks bother with. Or they are cautious & cagey & won't board (not without us doing something we're unwilling to do, like abandon ship), so we end up giving them a "full broadside" as Grandpaw used to say (it means shoot them with everything) and collecting the wreckage.

Our ships pack unusually big broadsides.

Either way, we sell the ship or the wreckage for extra income & because we already have more ships than we can assimilate. Plus we have no base down there to do repairs for us cheap, or to house captured ships at while we get ready to use them.

So we sell them.

All 4 countries down there are always willing to buy – with the levels of belligerence that exist down there, they can never get enough ships.

Anyway, this fight stood out because it was a Heavy Cruiser.

Now for the most part bigger ships only go to more reliable captains, and reliable captains have better things to do than casual piracy (or at least their governments tell them they do, and they tend to listen).

For one thing, a Heavy Cruiser is overkill for most piracy, since most ships you'd want to pirate are overmatched by a frigate and very very few can even challenge a destroyer.

So frigates and destroyers are what you send when you want to do piracy.

So anyway, Nieuport is running speculative cargo runs - that's where you buy stuff someplace where they have a lot & so it's cheap, then go find someplace to sell it where they don't have much of it – you can start good routes that way, and what it takes mostly is time, which some of the ships have extra of just now anyway, as there are more of them than existing routes can keep busy.

They're down near the Klingons, when a Klingon D6 cruiser captain decides he'd like a little extra income via piracy.

We found out later that he had gambling debts & saw this as easy money – what freighter could challenge a Heavy cruiser?.

Well, a Hydran Q-ship can.

So the Klingon demanded we get in shuttles and abandon ship so he could just tow the ship away & leave the shuttles to their fate.

Captain Allen couldn't allow that, so he delayed to try to get the Klingon in close enough to Nieuport so he could open fire effectively.

That worked, but it also made the Klingon edgy.

So while Nieuport hit the D6 Cruiser hard, they hit back, even though they were hurt and could see us launching fighters. Now if they weren't hurt, that could have been then end of poor Nieuport.

That Klingon mounts 7 Phaser 2, 4 Disruptor and 2 drones.

Or they did before we shot them & took several of those systems out.

We also took out their security stations though, & that leads to revolution.

See, the Klingons have slaves and they use them to help man their ships. They keep guards & security stations to keep them from mutiny & that works – as long as the security stations are intact.

Nobody beats the Klingons for sheer bloodymindedness – most folks, with a damaged ship & seeing 4 fighters ready to finish them off before they can shoot back, would call it quits.

But no, this Klingon captain was angry and that means all bets are off.

He started charging up weapons to fire again, even though it was obvious to anyone that he wouldn't live to fire them.

Well it was obvious to his slaves too.

They mutinied & did it successfully & quickly.

Of course it helped that we beamed some troops across to help them do it (we couldn't afford the time to see how it turned out – not with him charging weapons).

Anyway, it's the slaves' ship now, since it was mostly them that took it.

Nieuport is going to need a lot of repairs, so she headed off to a friendly Kzinti port to get them.

The former-Klingon D6 headed off to Wyn space, where they are likely to be welcomed, since the Wyn nation got their start and periodic boosts from exactly that sort of thing – folks escaping something, often bringing usable ships with them.

It'll cost us a lot to repair Nieuport & that isn't offset by salvage, but fair is fair – it was their ship by right of conquest. That's a right we use a lot & we don't want to be hypocrites.

Captain Allen says he is sending me a surprise, but he wouldn't say what.

Captain's Log, Stardate sigh

I've had to split up Captains Albrecht and Brown - they just kept skirmishing with each other verbally.

Each is now operating on his own, in his own ways, though still in the same vicinity.

In better news, we got 3 more ships unlocked, upgraded, crewed, & sent off to Commodore Connors.

They are named Scanty (the SkyHawk-A destroyer), Weedy (the SparrowHawk-G Troop Transport), and Hungry (the SparrowHawk-D Minelayer).

The next ships for which we're expecting to break the interlocks are the Monitors, then the KingEagles.

Vindair had a thought about that.

He pointed out that a King Eagle is just an upgraded WarEagle & we have examples of both. He also said that the hardest part of an extensive upgrade such as they had is figuring out how to do it, but that with several examples of the finished product, that part should be easy to duplicate. He wants to try upgrading our WarEagles into KingEagles.

Both WarEagles need extensive repairs and one needs almost needs rebuilding anyway, and he points out that it would cost us very little to try it & see if it works.

We can build whole ships of that size from the ground up (WarEagles are frigate-sized though often treated as cruisers since that Plasma Torpedo type R gives them a mighty punch), so it should be possible. So he will be looking into that.

And while he is working on that one of his WhizKids came up with another good idea for those mining pods we recovered from Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

Now, to not let them be idle, we had towed a small asteroid to the base & let them mine it (asteroids are effectively abundant – sure space is mostly empty, but when you travel at many times the speed of light, you pass them all the time), and then we got another when the first one was all used up.

And we do mine the whole asteroid – there is no element that isn't useful somewhere.

Sure, some folks would look at an apple tree full of apples and think only half a dozen were worth bothering with, but all of them are useful one way or another – ugly ones can be such things as pies & applesauce, & even bad ones make fine animal feed or vinegar.

Mining is like that – some folks only go for rare and valuable elements, but there isn't an element that isn't useful.

Even Silicon, which is very common & what most of rock is made of, can be purified & processed into many things, including ceramic armors, & do a good job at it.

We've been making it into things we can sell, & also recently expanded the operation into thick armor-glass domes & spheres, for habitats in orbit or on lifeless worlds.

There's always a market for livable space of any kind, so these sell well, though not for high profit margins.

Anyway, when we left & started towing the base away from Romulan space, we took the little asteroid with us – it's less than 100 meters across, so why not?

To give you some context, a fighter is about 10 meters, a PF about 35 meters, & full-on StarShips range from 150 to 400 meters.

Well, this asteroid is just about used up & that's what got our guys thinking.

While towing it isn't a big deal, it does slow us down some. And we'd rather not stay near the Romulans any longer than we have to (as an aside, that KRT tug we captured sure would come in handy in speeding us up, so it has had priority in breaking its interlocks so we can use it).

But it was pointed out that a small freighter is basically a cargo pod with engines attached at one end and a Bridge (that's where you control it from) and living area at the other end.

A small prospecting ship is the same, except it's a mining pod like ours instead of a cargo pod.

And we build small freighters for sale.

Well, I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

We'll be turning those 2 pods into small prospecting ships by the time they've used up their asteroid, so we don't have to tow another one & can go faster.

At first, they'll go mine asteroids in Federation territory.

It's fairly peaceful there & pirates generally aren't interested in low-payout cargoes such as the ones mining ships often have.

We'll look for better options later, but that should be fine for now.

Since Prospecting ships carry a lot of prospecting shuttles, we're building those too. Now with Prospecting shuttles, a ship can defend itself a bit, since each prospecting shuttle carries two prospecting charges.

Those are used for blasting apart asteroids, but can be used as short-range weapons too.

Well, since there's no point in doing things by half-measures we figured if it can defend itself a bit, it might as well defend itself well enough to do business in our usual style – risking dangerous areas.

So we'll be building a Plasma Torpedo Type F into the ships as well.

And while investigating the issue, we learned that Prospecting charges can be fired from prospecting shuttles, or from type 1 drone launch rails.

So, since it makes no difference to the prospecting shuttle which way we use to mount their prospecting charges, we used the type 1 drone rails.

That way if a threat is incoming, the shuttles can land, load some drones out of storage & defend the ship even better.

And to let them better know if a threat is incoming, we put a Scout sensor in Auxiliary Control. It'll also help them find the best asteroids to mine.

Captain's Log, Stardate good news.

Well today I have some good things to report.

To start off with, the second prisoner transfer went well. That gives us a good bit of money & I know how I want to spend it (after replenishing savings to the level I consider safe, of course).

That idea I mentioned before looks like it'll work, so we'll be investing in it.

It is this: When I was thinking about blockade runners earlier, I looked into the possibility of building Cargo Pseudo-fighters.

Several empires use that type.

For it, you basically take out 2/3 of its weapons & put cargo in the space you freed up.

Now obviously they aren't much good for fighting after that, but between the 6 PF's of a flotilla, they can deliver the same amount of cargo as a small freighter - ok, just a touch under, but I'm not going to bother specifying things like a mere 4% difference.

And they can do it many times faster than any freighter.

And, though they don't fight as well as normal PF's do, each of the 6 still fights at least 4 times more effectively than a small freighter does - depending on whose PF we're talking about.

Hydrans are better of course.

And the Hydran ones are the ones we'd need to use, partly because we only have so many Romulan ones, while we can build lots of Hydran ones, but mainly because the Hydrans neither border the Federation nor are hostile to them.

So while folks would be nervous to see Romulan PF's flying around Federation space & may even shoot at them before sorting things out, on the assumption it's some kind of ruse, the Hydran PF's have no such disadvantage.

Did I mention that priority shipping – getting goods there fast, pays a premium?

And no shipping option out there is faster than PF's - most aren't nearly as fast.

And generally, the stuff which folks want to get there fast is typically valuable stuff, so it attracts more pirates.

Having it shipped by PF's works out that way too, since even though they aren't up to regular PF fighting standards, they can still defend themselves, and a lone pirate would be taking a big chance if he attacked them.

So I checked into the possibilities, liked what I saw & started arranging routes, endpoints & so on.

Then a good friend pointed something out: PF's can attach & use something called "Warp Booster Packs" to increase their energy and speed.

He asked what if we were to build some Warp Booster Packs that didn't actually contain warp engines?

We'd have a strong but empty framework, with good solid attachment points to connect it to a PF.

If we then cover that with cheap sheetmetal, we have cargo space - Ok, it isn't really that simple - it's advanced alloys and composites, not sheet metal.

And cargo space is more than empty space - it needs powered reconfigurable racks, small internal tractor beams, robotic forklifts etc, to handle cargo properly. But you get the idea - we can built all that a lot easier than we can build warp engines in the same space.

But it gets better - we can actually fit more cargo space into those than we could in a standard Cargo PF (44% more than a small freighter, spread among the whole flotilla), and still retain all its weapons for self-defense.

We can increase cargo turn-around time too - instead of landing & waiting a few hours while the cargo is unloaded & then new cargo is loaded, we can pre-position some empty Cargo Packs (that's what we're calling these - we already have some - Vindair and his Whiz Kids whipped some up in an afternoon) at the places we regularly trade – the endpoints.

Shippers can load them up while we're in-transit, so they're ready when we arrive. Then we just land, drop off incoming full cargo packs, pick up outgoing cargo packs that are also already full, & be on our way.

Sure, that means the crew is constantly on the go & that wears at them.

But we have plans for that too.

How restful is it to take a 4-6 hour break while cargo is unloaded?

Not very.

But if you do half a dozen cargo runs without a break, & then take a day or day and a half off, that's a lot more restful & still gets the same amount of cargo moved in the same time overall.

Or maybe it'd be better to do 2-3 runs & then take 12 hours off – that's effectively a day off which ends up with you sleeping the night back on the moving PF (and save money on not getting a hotel).

We'll find what works best.

Plus, a standard PF flotilla includes one scout version & one leader.

We're keeping that arrangement.

With the scout PF they can see what's ahead, before they're seen, so they can avoid trouble.

And the standard leader version adds a tractor beam & a transporter, which we're keeping as-is, and another power reactor and battery bank, which we're not keeping.

Instead we're including more crew accommodations - basically recreation rooms to play games, watch movies & so on.

With the transporter they can move among the flotilla while in flight & all crews can spend off hours in the rec rooms.

Keeping your crew happy is important.

This is exciting, since it's a new business model you don't see others doing much of.

In a way, these are even like little Q-ships – not that they look innocent at all, but that they look less dangerous than they are - if folks see PF's on a cargo run, they assume they are standard cargo PF's & thus have 1/3 the usual weapons.

Certain kinds of pirates would take that as an opportunity to attack, yet we'd surprise them if they do.

If this pulls in as much income as I expect it will, we could be in a very good situation again.

We've already sent off the first flotilla of these to begin cargo runs - mostly within the Federation for now, and the permits were not cheap, I can tell you.

We'll be sending off additional flotillas as fast as we can build them.

And in other news, the surprise Captain Allen sent me, turns out to be a very rare thing – a non-aggressive, even humble, Klingon nerd named Trerol Rrimpoc.

Trerol was working on that D6 which we helped mutiny, & he begged our guys not to send him off with the rest of the Klingon crew – they weren't nice to him.

Since he's a science guy and a techy too, our guys thought he could join the WhizKids & he's excited about that. Trerol looks forward to getting to do science and tech stuff & not being hazed about it.

It's weird to have a Klingon around. He doesn't act like a Klingon at all & does clearly have a lot of talent with tech.

But it's still weird.

Well we've heard back from Area 1 that the separation of Captains Brown and Albrecht is working out well. They apparently just needed to be free of working together so each could do his own thing his own way.

Captain Albrecht started capturing pirates – he has a knack for timing, and for estimating the intentions and thoughts of others, that makes things work which otherwise wouldn't.

So even though the pirates in that area tend to avoid boarding ship to ship, he still manages.

For instance, in his most recent encounter, when the pirate told him to abandon ship in his shuttles, he said ok but said it'd take a moment to ready them, during which time he got a couple more ready from storage.

Then from the pirate's perspective, the crew did abandon ship.

In fact, the loaded shuttles that launched were full of boarding parties, not evacuating crew, and the ship was using some subtle ECM to mask the fact that it still had crew on board.

Now that wouldn't stand up to scans once the pirate got too close.

But it worked long enough for Captain Albrecht to work some magic.

At least that kind of skill may as well be magic.

See the pirate ignored the shuttles as he moved in, since he thought they were helpless as long as they kept their Phaser 3 unready, which they did, and the pirates could see that. This allowed them to move closer to the pirate, pretending to head towards a planet in nearly the same direction as the pirate was.

The planet was too far away to get to, but people cling to such hopes, so the pirate could easily believe our crews were trying to go there.

Then with exquisite timing, Captain Albrecht launched drones and told the pirates to "drop shields or die".

Now they could probably have shot down that many drones, probably. But rather than face the uncertainty, and the massive damage they'd take if they failed, and since their scans said that drones was all we were armed with (the other weapons were out of effective range & so Captain Albrecht kept them powered down & hid them with some more ECM), the pirates went ahead and dropped shields.

See, they figured that our ship was still too far out to effectively shoot them even if we had some other weapons hidden, but that if they dropped shields and pretended to surrender, we'd abort our drones & then they could blast us before we fired drones again.

So as soon as they dropped shields our shuttles changed course, docked with them, & unloaded boarding parties, then we aborted drones but launched fighters to maintain a threat.

Faced with fighters they may or may not be able to shoot down before dying, plus our troops already aboard and in control of some important spots, they really did surrender.

So here was a pirate ship capable of shooting down our drones or fighters or maybe even both (see he had a few Antidrone launchers & they have a variable performance against drones and a highly variable performance against fighters), and of beating us up from outside our effective range, yet he was taken without loss.

Captain Albrecht used his excellent intuition about how folks' minds work, and great timing, to capture that pirate. If he'd just launched everything & tried to close in and fire, it could have gone either way and he'd have taken damage at least.

He beat them not with brute force, but by a combination of playing weak, letting them assume what he wanted them to assume & thereby leading them into mistakes which he immediately capitalized on, leaving them no time to avoid the consequences.

So with the skillful way he handled it, we avoided all damage and captured a ship we then sold to the Hydrans (they need more & we don't, plus we need the money).

Needless to say, he and his crew got big bonuses.

You don't get their best efforts from folks unless you reward them for it.

Some folks with business degrees never understand that.

While Fred Albrecht was at that, Captain Brown found a number of trade possibilities and developed them.

And while doing so, he found an interesting star system which we'll want to check out further.

It's inside a dust cloud in the neutral zone, near where we plan to settle Oz down.

It has lots of bare rocks and no habitable planets, but there's some mining potential there.

But mainly we'll want to watch it for pirates, since that dust cloud makes it a great place for pirates to hide & we don't want a nest of them near us.

Though it isn't exactly a dust cloud - really its mostly thumb-sized chunks of rock more or less orbiting the star at roughly oort cloud distance (in a globe, rather than a ring, which is weird).

That 'dust' tends to scrub off your shields as you pass through so anybody waiting in ambush inside would have a big advantage over somebody just entering. So we'll definitely want to watch it closely to keep anybody from setting up inside like that.

Captain Brown still regularly gets shot up in fights - he wins them, but takes damage pretty much every time.

Captain Albrecht has yet to take any damage.

Why is that? I don't know – it's like watching a talented expert marksman compete with a merely competent one: what they do looks Exactly the same to any observer. But subtle little differences combine to make a very different result.

Captain Brown also mentioned that relations between Lyrans and Hydrans are worse than we thought & there are border skirmishes happening between the two.

Well, anything can be an opportunity.

Maybe the Hydrans will want to hire Task Force 2 to help them defend, or pay the base a stipend to secure its share of the border. We'll look into that.


	8. Chapter 8

Captain's Log, Stardate clear sailing?

So we're approaching the end of the Neutral zone & folks are getting relieved at the prospect of not having any more problems with the Romulans.

The further we get from their territory, the more problems they'd have, if they tried to bother us.

Now, the way the Neutral Zone ends, is that the Romulans and Federation have only claimed territory to a certain point.

Beyond that, everything is unclaimed, since things are so sparse out there, that close to the Galactic Rim, that there is no point claiming it.

Well that's where we will be traveling for a while.

We'll be skirting the edge of Federation Territory, but they haven't caused us any trouble. We'll stay close to the feds for several reasons – it's shorter than if we went further out, plus navigation will be easier, we can resupply, and folks can pop over to Fed space for shore leave. We haven't had a lot of shore leave since the Romulans started attacking.

Vindair says he is looking forward to having more free time, once we're no longer on an emergency footing, so he can get back to working on his pet project.

See, his hobby is to work on developing something he calls the "sLepton gun" - a weapon using SyperSymmetric Leptons to convey force straight to a target - like being smacked by an enormous mallet, without the mallet.

I don't think he'll ever get it done, since it sounds way more complicated than any one person could manage on their own, but hey, whatever you want to do in your spare time is fine by me.

When I asked him about firing it, he corrected me – he said you don't "fire" it, you "quantize" it or "collapse its waveform".

So now I don't ask him about it – I smile & nod while he talks.

Now, I know science pretty well, but when talking to him I may as well be a ditch-digger as far as how well educated I feel, & how well I follow what he says.

Our folks in Area 1 are looking forward to our getting there too, though that is still months away (yes, it's that far).

See, currently when they get shore leave, it's among the Hydrans, since you can't risk relaxing with the Klingons – they're just too aggressive and unpredictable to hang out with. And the Lyrans and the LDR (who are still Lyrans) just can't get along with Kzinti & we have many of those in our crews. Pretty much every meeting between them would end in a fight if we were not careful to keep them separate.

So that leaves the Hydrans as the only other folks nearby.

But while the Hydrans are easy to get along with, they like cold planets with methane atmospheres, and that isn't exactly homelike.

So our crews look forward to the StarBase getting there.

And we will be a StarBase when we get there – we're still making progress and have reached a new stage – they're beginning to enclose and pressurize some new areas.

That doesn't mean it's done nor even close, but it looks a lot better at least.

Captain's Log, Stardate We're through.

That's it.

The struggle to get by is over.

Well, it should be at least.

With the big payment on the way, the difficult part should be over.

Probably.

I heard from Commodore Connors today that he arrived and checked in with the LDR, so his task force is now officially working for them (that's still just the 4 frigates, 2 destroyers and 1 light cruiser we sent first, the more recent 3 ships haven't joined him yet).

Our bonus for showing up was already deposited in our Federation bank account – that's a nice amount, but there's more...

Well, the LDR immediately had something for Task Force 1 of the Trader Joe Space Navy to do.

And of course Commodore Connors did us proud.

See, an Andromedan group was harassing local shipping - close enough to threaten an important LDR planet, and the LDR wanted us to take care of it.

The group was composed of an Intruder (that's the Andromedan equivalent of... call it a battlecruiser, since while it's only about Heavy Cruiser size, it packs almost the punch of a Dreadnought & that fits the Battlecruiser category more or less – those Andromedans are hard to categorize though, since they're so different).

Anyway, it was an Intruder and 3 destroyers, except of course that Andromedan Destroyers punch much harder than our destroyers do.

See, their main weapon is called a Tractor-Replusor beam and it hits as hard as a Phaser 4 at short ranges.

And It reaches out further than most other weapons do too. Now I don't mean maximum range, but the ranges where it can do meaningful amounts of damage: at most ranges and for most weapons – theirs do more than ours.

Then for support they have something that behaves very much like a Phaser 2 does, so we just call it a Phaser 2.

Then they have this weird thing called a Displacement Device which make a ship (theirs or yours, but it works a lot more reliably when they use it on themselves) just hop a fair distance across the battlefield. They have some control of the distance and direction of the hop, but it isn't perfect.

They often use that to get in close, where they are deadly, or to hop right past minefields & such.

Then what's weirdest, is what they use instead of shields.

They have what we call Power Absorber Panels which absorb any kind of energy you throw at them – Phasers, drones, Disruptors, Plasmas, whatever – even hitting them with big rocks if you can manage that.

Whatever kind of energy, they just absorb into those panels.

Then they charge their batteries from the panels and use that energy to power their ship & weapons.

So while most ship duels go along the lines of prolonged chipping away at each-others' shields (and you have to do enough damage at a time to get past shield reinforcement, or you don't chip away at all), that gets you exactly nowhere with versus the Andromedans.

The only way to beat them is to do so much damage to them so quickly that their Power Absorber capacity fills up faster than they can drain off the power and use it for other things.

They can dissipate some into space too, if things get bad enough for them. That makes it even harder.

And the Intruder and other large ships can take its support ships inside itself, using an odd variant of Transporter technology.

When they have a support ship docked internally like that, they can transfer power to it too, even further increasing their ability to get rid of energy & thereby soak up potential damage with no ill effects.

So they're a very tough nut to crack.

They can hop in close, if they want, or even behind you, where you have fewer weapons facing, then mess you up with those Tractor-Repulsor (we just call 'em TR for short) beams and probably not be bothered in the least by what you fire back.

Even ships which are good at doing large amounts of damage all at once, like the Hydrans, generally need to get in very close to do so, and against Andromedans, very few survive the attempt.

Their weapons are that effective up close.

To be able to defeat Andromedans, you have to either bring overwhelming force & accept that you will lose some ships, or be able to do very large amounts of damage to them from long range.

Drones and Plasma Torpedoes are best for that & here's where we are in luck – the TJSN mounts lots of those, and the Andromedans are even weaker against them than most, since they don't use shuttles & so can't distract your weapons with Wild Weasels.

The Romulan and Gorns don't have a lot of trouble with the Andromedans for that reason – both use Plasma Torpedoes a lot.

Drones make Andromedans wary too, but they have enough Phasers to shoot those down unless you bring a lot of drone launchers.

We do.

Most don't.

So anyway, this was a significant force of Andromedans – one you'd normally want to send a moderate fleet after – something more significant, at least, than our little group of frigates & destroyers and lone light cruiser.

And even with a moderate fleet, you'd expect to lose maybe half of it.

But Commodore Connors had studied up during the trip, and had all his guys study up, on all the known information about Andromedans.

Still, he was cautious just in case.

Even though they were in an area far from the Plasma Torpedo-using empires & so didn't expect that, Andromedans are still smart, and very very capable.

So Connors approached cautiously with TJSN Skinny (that's the light cruiser and PF tender he is using as a flagship until we send him something better) in the lead of his other ships, using those Scout sensors to spot the Andromedans before they spotted him.

And he had his Scout PF behind his group, to prevent anybody sneaking up that way.

Yet he did not see the Andromedans first, since they had a scout too.

So they both saw each-other at the same time.

Andromedans are confident and belligerent.

They saw a small fleet (very small), and moved straight towards it, to crush it before it could be joined by enough additional ships to become a threat.

Commodore Connors went with that and fled.

He turned tail and ran.

At least from their perspective he did.

In fact he was encouraging them to chase him, while laying what mines he had. Now that's 4 large mines from each ship, from the one mine rack each we'd installed, plus some of what they call transporter bombs.

They're small mines, really, but you can send them places via transporter, so they get called Transporter bombs. Most ships carry several, and all of ours certainly do.

They can come in very handy.

So he laid mines as he went, but spread his ships out a bit and scattered small groups of mines carefully, so that he'd likely get a hit even if the Andromedans changed course, or somehow detected the mines (we don't know everything they are capable of) and hopped over them using their Displacement Devices.

He just rolled the transporter bombs out the shuttle bay doors, instead of using transporters, since transporter use can be detected & they'd figure out what he was doing – there's no other reason to use transporters to get something from the ship out to empty space near you.

So they couldn't detect him placing either kind of mine.

Now emplaced mines can't be detected unless you are moving very slowly and specifically scanning for them, unless they are in a large group and set to automatic. That's where they go off when they detect a target, and do so, uhhh, automatically.

But Commodore Connors set his to Command Control, which means they won't go off until he gives the command.

Now a large mine does 35 damage (a small mine does 10), and 35 is enough to knock down the front (or thickest) shield of a Heavy Cruiser and do a couple points of internal damage besides.

But an Andromedan Intruder can take 80 damage to its front Power Absorbers with no ill effects at all – though the 81st point will get through unless they've had time to transfer out some power & thus free up more absorbing capacity.

Now doing just a little damage to them would just piss them off and alert them to what we were trying.

So, while he varied it, most groups of mines he laid were 3 large & 3 small – enough to do 135 damage all at once to the unlucky.

I hate to be anti-climactic, but the Andromedans just blew up when they hit such a group.

They were all traveling in a tight group for mutual support & all got caught in the blast.

Now think for a moment about a Dam (the kind on a planet that holds water from a river).

A Dam does a real good job at holding back a great deal of water... right up until it's too much and it fails. Especially if it fails from getting way too much water all at once.

Then it can be dramatic and catastrophic.

Defenses can be like that, especially Andromedan ones. You may not seem to be making much progress, right up until you break through and win.

See, when you get enough damage on an Andromedan to get through his Power Absorbers, you start taking out his internal systems.

What you take out is kinda random, but it can include the Power Absorbers themselves – they're an internal system too.

And they're full of energy, which gets released when you damage them.

And the released energy then does more internal damage which will likely take out more Power Absorbers & start a cascade.

So its more or less the default for Andromedans to be completely fine right up to the moment they explode.

And that's apparently what happened here – we did enough damage with the mines to cause such a cascading failure & blow them to bits.

And since we'd set our mine groups to take out their biggest ship, the smaller ones had no chance at all.

Well apparently they had called for friends who were in the area to make sure we didn't outrun them and get away.

So just after they exploded, another group of Intruder plus 3 destroyers showed up on the scout sensors of our PF which was watching in the opposite direction.

And our mine racks were empty.

But Commodore Connors is a Commodore for a reason (well, he was but I'll get to that in a second).

See, he had his Scatter Packs ready like he was supposed to. Remember that's where you load a shuttle full of drones & set it to launch them all at once at a target.

So he launched all the drones he could control, which is normally half a dozen per ship, but is more when you have scout sensors. So all told his little fleet could control 72 drones & launched that many.

Now he could have launched more if he'd used the kind of drones that guide themselves, but he's a canny one, is Commodore Connors, and he knew what he faced.

So those drones swept in and as they're almost at the Andromedans, they used their displacement devices to hop right past them.

Now that would have fooled self-guiding drones & made them shut down, since they couldn't see their target in front of them anymore.

But since there were the other kind, they just turned right around & came at the Andromedans from behind.

The Andromedans shot down the ones they could, but it wasn't enough, even though they maneuvered to get their front weapons to bear.

They only stopped 27 of the 72, and so they exploded.

So Commodore Connors had to abort the 2nd wave of drones he'd just launched, since they had no targets anymore. Still, he'd wanted to make sure, and we commend that. And while he could have used Plasma Torpedoes to beat them, that would have required him to get in closer, which we're not comfortable doing yet if we can avoid it.

He collected the unexploded weapons -mines & drones for use later.

Waste not want not.

Plus that 2nd wave of drones were expensive self-guiding drones.

That way he could get them out faster, before the first group hit & freed up some guidance capacity.

There weren't as many of them, since they had to come from the drone launchers on his ships (the scatter packs were empty), but they're worth more – that's why we carry both types of drones – the self-guiding ones are more expensive and not always necessary.

When he submitted the Sensor logs to the LDR as proof of what he'd done, they authorized a very large bounty (that's what they call a bonus) for us.

It'll take a few days for them to get it together, but when they pay it out, that'll solve our money worries.

We promoted Commodore Connors of course. Now He's a Rear-Admiral just like his nephew Mac Andrews.

How will we spend our bonus?

Well we have a lot of ideas.

We could use more Q-ships in Area 1 to work the expanding trade routes there.

We could use more Cargo PF flotillas.

The habitat dome business is doing well & we could expand that.

But those must wait.

Trerol (that's our Klingon who joined the WhizKids recently) had a very interesting idea.

He points out that while we make money from building ships for sale (and we used to make money from repairing ships – which should get going again when we get to area 1 and get settled in), that we aren't making as much money at it as we could.

He points out that we are buying parts & using those, but that we could make our own parts and very much increase our profit margin thereby.

We'd need to fit in a lot of what they call Fab and Works (For Fabrication and Workshops, but we'll just say Fabs for simplicity), and if we did, then they could make all the parts we need, assuming we had raw materials to supply them, which the Prospecting Ships could take care of (or could if we built more, which is easy).

We'd need space to fit in that much fabrication ability, but Trerol points out that my old "7th pie slice" idea would work and give us that space.

Remember that's where, as part of the upgrade to StarBase, instead of using the original base core to fill the 6th slot in the new circular base core, we build a new 6th pie slice for that, while leaving the 7th on top of it all, where it is now.

He said he did the calculations & we'd only need a little more bracing, which would be easy and he already has new schematics all drawn up for it.

But as wonderful as all that sounds, it must wait too, mostly.

See, there's a rare opportunity, matching up with a large need & that must take precedence.

The opportunity – we have a chance to buy a Kzinti Tug.

And the need is to get away from Romulan territory as soon as possible, since they are still as belligerent as ever & may attack anytime.

An additional tug would speed up our travel a lot.

While we have the captured KRT tug, it isn't usable yet & this is urgent. Plus, once we get the KRT's interlocks broken, having a third tug help tow will speed us even more. And the sooner we arrive at our destination, the sooner we start most of our businesses again.

We'll have enough left after buying the tug that we can start on Trerol's fab idea too. We won't get it done as quickly, but it will get done – largely by paying for itself as it goes.

See, you build a little fab capacity & thereby make a little more money & use that to build a little more fab, or prospecting ships, or something else that supports the whole idea & so on until you're done.

Why do we have a chance to buy a Kzinti Tug?

Well there's a story there.

See, somehow, a famous and popular Kzinti actress got political control of her clan.

She has plenty of support because she is so popular, even though she has some wild ideas, and no experience running anything.

Well one of those wild ideas includes cutting the navy budget and selling off some ships to cover some new projects.

And while most of the navy ships are for sale only to other Kzinti, our Kzin contacts have just enough clout to get the tug that's for sale.

See, the actress sees it as more of a commercial ship than a navy ship, since it has a lot of cargo space and currently has cargo pods attached, so she approved the sale, even though it's had the fleet's C-14 refit done to it, which adds 2 Disruptors and some engines and shields, mainly.

We're jumping at the chance while it's still there, quick before her folks realize that her being popular doesn't have anything to do with her being qualified or knowledgeable, which she isn't.

In any case, we get a tug out of it, which is already on the way.

We're going to name it Stubby.

We've budgeted for some changes to it when it gets here too.

We can actually do them while it tows us.

So we're going to swap out all 4 of it's Disruptors for 4 Plasma Torpedo Launchers Type G, 8 of its Phaser 3 and its Antidrone system for drone racks, and 2 of its Phaser 3's for Gatling Phasers, and fit one Scout Sensor into its Auxiliary Control.

Then we'll convert one of the smaller cargo bays to hold 4 fighters.

Then the usual - adding barracks, and Mech Links to all tractor beams, so they can dock PF's (which is cheap and useful, so we've started doing it to all ships as opportunity presents itself).

That'll set it up to fight our style and to keep it safe on the dangerous cargo runs we will have it doing once it's done towing the base.

Well, in the course of making the deal and negotiating for certain plans so we could repair it when and if it gets damaged, they actually let us buy all the plans & schematics, plus licenses to build our own spare parts.

What they may not realize is that this will, once the upgrade to Starbase is finished & our shipyards are bigger, let us build entire Kzinti-style tugs from scratch, including the C-14 upgrade. That could be very useful.

Captain's Log wow that was close.

So we've been getting Oz resupplied by having a Q-Ship fly past as if they're unaffiliated with us and will pass well forward or aft of us, then once they're close enough for us to support them, they turn to intercept us, as PF's launch from base to go meet them.

That's so it isn't immediately obvious to any lurking Romulans where they are going.

Our ships are tough but we still don't want them ambushed, which the Romulans would probably love to do.

Well, most of the time anyway – today we got ambushed & bit back hard enough I don't think the Romulans were very happy.

See, not long before he was going to make his turn towards Oz, Captain Murray got jumped.

Three Romulan ships de-cloaked near Kondor, though not close enough that Captain Murray could blast them effectively.

So the leader of this Romulan group is in a KD5R, and he is flanked by 2 K5R's.

Don't you wish the Romulans came up with better names for their converted Klingon ships?

Anyway, that's a Light Cruiser and 2 Frigates – the Klingons knew them as a D5 and 2 F5's.

Now the Romulans were not sure who they'd accosted and, not wanting to blow up their own shipping, they demanded to know who owned Kondor and where she was headed and why.

Well Captain Murray has grown into the job nicely since got nicknamed Sooty for, shall we say, responding a little forcefully to an attack.

Anyway, he thinks fast & so he got a crewman of his, who is Romulan, to pretend to be the Ship's captain & tell the Romulans some lies about who they were & where they were going.

Well, the Romulans were convinced .. but only enough to be willing to board her and verify (they don't like to board us anymore, but they Figured Kondor probably wasn't us).

So the KD5R (that's the light cruiser) pulls up to board, and Captain Murray, thinking fast, moves as if to be helpful and compliant, but actually so they'd dock side to side such that only the rear weapons on the light cruiser would be able to help the frigates.

See, he knew he could not keep up the ruse after they boarded & a fight would ensue.

And he knew it was going to be an ugly fight, since we didn't have overwhelming force like we prefer, and the K5R's (frigates remember) were hanging back with weapons ready.

But he couldn't avoid a fight either, since warships are much faster than Q-Ships. So he got ready as best he could.

Well the moment the light cruiser docked and boarding started, Kondor launched a Plasma Torpedo Type F at one of the frigates.

Now you'd think he would launch fighters at the same time, but he's smarter than that.

See, he waited a few seconds – just long enough for the Frigates to shoot, which they did.

They shot our Torpedo all the way down to nothing, but that used up a bunch of their Phaser firepower for the moment.

They also launched their Plasma Torpedoes at our ship (there was a lot going on all at once here).

Only then did Captain Murray launch fighters and scatter pack shuttles.

See, he needed those to live long enough to fire, and they wouldn't have if he launched them before the enemy fired- not against a smart captain anyway, who would recognize that Torpedoes are dangerous, but our fighters are more so.

Now here is where it got ugly. See, the Light Cruiser still had its rear-firing weapons it could use, and while it can't shoot the ship it's docked to, it has no such trouble shooting fighters. And each of those frigates had another couple Phasers left too.

Captain Murray fired his PPT (That's Pseudo Plasma Torpedo – the decoy – you can't tell it from a real Plasma Torpedo) to give them something else to shoot at, but they judged (correctly) that the fighters were the bigger threat & shot at those instead.

There just wasn't anything more we could do about that.

So they fired at the fighters & killed 2, crippled one & left one completely untouched (pilot Hanson, who flew that, has been bragging ever since, almost as much as Pilot Gregg does).

But they didn't shoot at our shuttles.

Maybe they assumed they were just there to make their Phaser 3's available, and so weren't enough of a threat to get priority.

Meanwhile, Kondor had been firing too. She fired fusion beams at the Frigates, but didn't do much, since they were at range 5 and that's beyond the range where you can get Fusion beams to perform well.

But she also fired Gatlings at the 4 incoming Plasma F's too.

Now Gatling Phasers are nice, but she only has 2, and the fighters weren't able to fire yet, so she only reduced that 80 incoming damage to 64.

That 64 damage burned up her shields and shield reinforcement, her armor (not many ships have armor, but Q-ships do), and did 34 internal damage too.

Mostly that burned up her cargo holds and crew spaces that's living quarters and such, where the crew weren't, since they were working, though, also, a whole lot of them had rushed into that Light Cruiser for safety, since they knew what was coming.

Anyway, the damage also took out a couple weapons, our fighter bays and most of our engines.

See, normally we'd have had at least one Wild Weasel ready while facing Romulans, or anyone known to use Plasma Torpedoes.

But the only reason we had any chance at all in this fight was surprise – that got the Light Cruiser to dock (and it was losing the boarding fight even though it had extra boarding parties aboard – silly that other folks just never bring enough).

But since the Romulans had been specifically scanning for signs of a Wild Weasel charging up, we couldn't use one or it would have given away our surprise and made it a much tougher fight.

But while they can scan the energy signature of a Wild Weasel charging, they can't tell that your crew is loading drones into a shuttle to use it as a scatter pack.

So anyway, Kondor was all messed up now and didn't have enough energy remaining to power her weapons.

Half our fighters were destroyed and one of the other 2 crippled, and things must have looked pretty good to our enemies.

But now it was our turn.

The scatter packs finally came online, able to fire, & did so - they fired 6 drones at each Frigate and startled the heck out of them I'm sure.

Well, they were game and spun to get their rear Phasers able to fire.

They took out 2 drones each that way, but the other drones hit, doing 48 damage to each frigate (I'm summarizing – see the 4th drone had a slight delay in each case, as each frigate grabbed a drone in a tractor beam – that works if you can hold it until its fuel runs out or until you can shoot it, but in this case the internal damage from the other drones took out their tractor beams, releasing the drones which hit the frigates despite the brief delay).

The damage from the drones burned thru their shields and messed them up almost as bad as Kondor was messed up.

Then our fighters started plinking at them.

They didn't have long before the enemy could fire Phasers again, but they used the time well.

Pilot Hanson demanded immediate surrender, and not getting it, shot each with a Fusion beam.

Now that took out about a quarter of what they each had left.

Then he demanded surrender again.

Lacking that, he and the other fighter each fired once with Phaser 3's, again, doing internal damage - only 4 per shot, but that's a lot when you only have about a dozen systems left total.

Then they repeated until they got the surrender.

It took 3 of their 4 shots available with those Gatlings, but they did get the Frigates to surrender.

Of course by the time they did, they didn't have anything left to fight with and were about ready to explode with just one more hit, but they did surrender once they got to that point.

We had to pull in the shuttles we'd used as scatter packs, load them with troops and send them over to board the frigates, since Kondor couldn't move that far, she was that messed up.

Well, luckily Oz was nearby, as I mentioned.

So Stumpy altered course & she and Oz together went and picked up all 4 ships.

Kondor and the frigates we can repair, and the KD5R hasn't got a scratch on her.

Kondor is sooty again, but nobody is teasing Captain Murray about it – it was a near thing.

Some of the cargo we needed got destroyed, but we'll get by. It was mostly parts for building new ships anyway.


	9. Chapter 9

Captain's Log Stardate These Romulans just don't quit.

Just when we were thinking we might have seen the last of the Romulan Navy, they came and tried again.

And they tried to do better – our fighters and PF's have beaten them up before, so they brought plenty of their own - more of them than we have.

And where one Dreadnought failed before, they sent two.

But let me start from the beginning.

So we've been keeping Scout PF's out watching the nearest 2 Romulan Bases, as I mentioned before, just in case.

And it paid off.

The PF watching the nearest Romulan Base saw some ships assemble, head out on an intercept course for us, and then cloak.

And the news wasn't good – it was a big fleet, including several extra Pseudo-Fighters flying alongside independently.

Normally PF's don't fight that far from their bases, so some of the ships were probably PF tenders as well – we couldn't be sure since the range was so far, and since the Scout PF's were under strict orders not to be seen.

So our PF's hurried back – outrunning cloaked ships isn't hard...unless you're a big heavy base being towed by just one tug.

Yup – there was no way we could outrun them & we certainly couldn't hide.

We didn't know exactly what was in the fleet, since we didn't get that close, but we knew it looked overwhelming.

We could only tell the sizes of what they'd sent, but that was pretty daunting: 2 Dreadnoughts, 1 BattleCruiser, 5 Heavy Cruisers, 9 Destroyers and something like 30 extra PF's

And we had only the base, which couldn't fire it's Phaser 4's (though it can now fire drones and Gatlings), Stumpy the tug, and some fighters and PF's.

Well, we had a bunch of captured ships docked too, but they couldn't do anything other than launch shuttles, plus the one carrier and 2 PF tenders that could also launch fighters and PF's.

And Kondor, but she was in for repairs and in no shape to fight, though she could contribute 4 more fighters.

And we had 2 half-built prospecting ships that couldn't fight at all, though each had several shuttles they could launch.

Well, we all looked around for a moment in stunned silence at the news – some started to say goodbye to each other, thinking that we had no chance against such odds, but then Admiral Andrews spoke up.

He asked for and got a report from the Scout sensors we have on base, with new scans directed forwards along our path.

And while those were coming in he got status reports from several folks.

Then he said "we got this" and started issuing orders.

First we changed course one way, then slowed down a touch & changed course another way.

Then we launched all the fighters, shuttles and PF's we had (just keeping back a couple shuttles for Wild Weasel duty), all of which had been prepared while we changed course.

Now that was quite a few shuttles, given that each captured ship could contribute.

So all told, we launched 89 shuttles, 70 fighters, and 31 Pseudo-Fighters.

And all of them immediately ran off and hid (landed and shut off power) on a 1 kilometer wide asteroid we'd changed course to pass.

See, Admiral Andrews had done some calculations, and had experts double-check him, and figured out where the Romulans were likely to meet us.

From that, he guessed where they were likely to de-cloak and attack, and he made his plans accordingly.

Now, all this course changing was to put that asteroid behind us at just the right distance and direction.

Sure the Romulans would know we'd changed course slightly, but that happens normally. And just to make sure they didn't suspect something, our course, by the time they could see it, was headed towards something we'd be likely to head towards anyway – a small planet we'd probably want to check out (not that it mattered, it was so far off that it would not be an issue in this fight, but it gave them something to believe as far as why we changed course).

Now that may sound like a lot of floating space rocks were in our vicinity.

But remember, while space is mostly empty, you still run across a lot of stuff when you're traveling at many times the speed of light.

Anyway, Several of the PF's didn't hide immediately, but took a very brief detour to lay mines along the path we expected the Romulans to take (and on a few other paths that were less likely but possible).

They laid both the small mines (also called Transporter Bombs) they normally carry, as well as some big ones they had along or this purpose.

See, we'd had some of the new Cargo Packs ready for the next Cargo PF flotilla, and we quickly attached those and loaded mines in them.

You can open cargo bay doors and roll mines out them just like you can with shuttle bay doors.

Now we were careful how and where we set set them – the WhizKids had a mathematical probability matrix, they called it, & our pilots carefully followed it, as far as what kinds of mines, with what triggers, to lay where.

Now detecting a cloaked ship is hard – so hard you basically can't do it unless you already know it's there & have a pretty good idea of where.

But there's an exception to that – mines.

Now I haven't studied up on why that is (Vindair will talk your ear off about it if you let him) but the simple form is that mines set to automatic have about a 1 in 6 chance of going off when a cloaked ship passes by close enough to them.

So that was a big part of the 'probability matrix' we used to lay them – so we'd be assured to get at least one explosion, since, when cloaked ships take damage, including damage from a mine, they can not only be seen, but locked on to for firing.

Now with too big a group, they might be able to detect them and avoid them, and too small a group and they might pass right over them and not set any off, so we spread out clusters, so to speak – small groups of 3-5 mines spaced in a carefully calculated grid.

Well, laying the mines didn't take as long as it sounds (it may sound like a whole lot of mines, but it wasn't that many), so the PF's were able to run to the far side of that asteroid, land and power off, like the others, before the Romulans got within detection range.

Meanwhile, the base and Stumpy had been charging Wild Weasels, and working on getting more fighters out of storage and ready to fight.

And, while very busy inside the ships, from outside it appeared like we sailed along as if everything were normal, acting, as they say, "fat dumb and happy" - that is, pretending to be oblivious to the oncoming Romulans.

See, they didn't know that we knew they were coming. That's why we were able to ambush their ambush.

Now we had carefully calculated their speed and probable arrival time and distance, so we weren't too surprised when a group of mines blew and both revealed, and damaged, some cloaked ships.

And now, instead of relying on projections from old data, we knew exactly where they were. And that was pretty close to being right where we wanted them.

So the moment they hit the mines, our fighters, shuttles and PF's lit their engines and took off to intercept the Romulans, though they did it along very careful courses so they wouldn't set off any of our own mines.

See, we wanted to take advantage of their fade-in period – they short time during de-cloaking in which they still can't fire, but can be fired at. So our fighters etc raced to be right behind the Romulans and almost on top of them – just barely far back enough to escape damage if they hit any more mines.

Well now when they hit our mines and saw a bunch of fighters launching, the Romulans delayed very briefly while deciding what to do, then apparently decided to "divide and conquer" by stopping here to take on our fighters & PF's while Stumpy and the base were still out of range to help (though only just barely).

So they started launching their fighters and PF's.

They wanted them out and available to defend the ships from our small craft (that's fighters, PF's and shuttles) before the ships de-cloaked.

See, you can launch fighters and PF's while cloaked, but it gives away your position.

And our ambush had been carefully planned so our craft didn't have to go far, so we got in range before the enemy craft were ready and able to fire (remember that delay after launching?).

Our PF's casually took out their fighters with Plasma Torpedoes as they launched one by one (see, they don't have launch tubes, so they launch pretty slowly), and they were helpless to do anything about it.

Now there is also a delay after launching before they can fire for the PF's they launched from their PF tenders, and that's pretty much the same time delay as the fade-in period the independent PF's had, during which they can't fire either.

Have you ever seen what's called a "western" where 2 quick-draw experts draw their weapons and each try to shoot first?

The first accurate shot wins & ends it.

Fighters and PF's are so heavily armed, it's like that with them.

See, all told they had 48 PF's to our 31, but we got to fire first, at our best range, so each of ours could entirely take out 2 of theirs using just our Gatling Phasers alone.

Now it wasn't exactly that way, since we actually used any other weapons (Fusion beams and Plasma F Torps) as a first choice in case we needed Gatlings to shoot down Plasma Torpedoes, and since in each case, the craft actually firing was whatever one was at the best range to each target, in that big tangled mixup of fighters and PF's.

Plus some of our craft (PF leaders) help back because had special missions that came first, but you get the idea.

So, to put it mildly, their approach (launching fighters and PF's before de-cloaking) wasn't working out well for them.

Well, the Romulans certainly didn't like that.

So since their Admiral was an aggressive bloody-minded sort who was more interested in sinking his teeth into the enemy, so to speak, than in analyzing the best approach at the moment, the whole fleet de-cloaked intending to wipe us out in a barrage of Plasma Torpedoes.

Well that's what our PF leaders and shuttles had been waiting for.

They'd spent their time thus far in carefully positioning themselves to they could dock and board, each with their allotted targets.

See, Admiral Andrews was watching, analyzing and giving orders as things went, so he allotted targets as information and circumstances dictated.

So almost at the same time the Romulan ships started de-cloaking, they were each shot just enough to knock down one shield, which, depending on the ship, took from 3-5 fusion beams or 2-3 Gatling Phasers to do.

That was no problem - we had that much left and to spare, since most of their fighters never got time to launch and shooting their PF's had taken only about a quarter of our available firepower.

Then, while they were still helplessly de-cloaking, they got festooned with our boarding shuttles and PF leaders.

Now remember that our PF leaders have a couple barracks each and so normally carry just as many boarding parties as a Dreadnought?

Yeah.

Well, two, plus 2 shuttles, went to each dreadnought, to make sure we had a properly overwhelming force.

And that left 7 PF leaders – one each (plus a few shuttles) for all their other big ships and one of the smaller ones – a Destroyer.

And that left almost 7 boarding shuttles each for the other Romulan Destroyers.

Not that it worked out that way exactly, since it was a big tangled mess and some of our shuttles were out of position either because they were not speedy enough, or because they had to avoid mines.

But then again, 7 each was more than we needed for those destroyers – 5 would have been enough.

So, if ever anyone got caught with their pants down, it was this Romulan fleet.

We never got to ask their admiral what he was thinking: he was killed while leading hand to hand fighting against our boarding parties. That's something you don't want to do when facing Kzinti.

Anyway, while the boarding actions were resolving (every one of them in our favor), the Romulans finished their de-cloaking and fired.

Now, having anticipated that, and not having anything left to shoot at without possibly hitting our own boarders, our PF's and fighters – that is, everything the Romulans could shoot at (since the shuttles had docked), all raced back to our asteroid, since if you get one of those between you and a Plasma Torpedo, it can lose lock-on and hit the rock instead.

Well, that was optimistic – Plasma Torpedoes move faster than fighters or PF's can, and our craft didn't have much of a lead on them.

So the Romulans had charged their Plasma Torpedoes in the way that "shotgunned" them, or launched a bunch of Plasma F Torpedoes instead of a smaller number of bigger Torpedoes.

But Plasma F's are just fine for vaporizing fighters.

They fired a total of 63 Plasma F's and 40 Pseudo-Plasma Torpedoes (when shotgunning, your PPT decoys don't match what you fired, so there's no point in wasting a big decoy, since it wouldn't fool anyone).

They also fired a bunch of Phasers and even 6 Disruptors, damaging several PF's before the Plasmas traversed the distance.

Our guys ran as well as they could, then spun to face the Torpedoes and fired all those Gatling Phasers they had saved up for just this purpose (see, a fighter's Gatlings only fire forwards).

Well, we actually had enough to shoot about half of them down, but we didn't.

Instead we divided fire among the Plasma Torps so that we'd weaken each one enough for its target to survive.

Figuring out how best to divide the fire took some computing power, given that a lot of our fighters were damaged to various levels, but Admiral Andrews had the entire bunch of WhizKids on communicators calling out instructions on the fly.

It was close, but we barely squeaked by – while all our fighters and PF's were damaged, most of them severely, we didn't lose any - except a couple where the Romulans had concentrated fire with Phasers or Disruptors, but luckily they weren't acting in a very coordinated manner by then.

Now Romulans carry a suicide charge on their ships (I mentioned that before, didn't I?) so they can avoid capture.

But nobody wants to die if they can avoid it.

Most petty dictators command their troops to "fight to the last man" and such-like. But few can manage to motivate their troops to do so.

So none of the Romulans actually suicided.

Well we turned around & collected the Romulan ships, our own craft (some of which couldn't move anymore), and even the valuable wreckage.

While we didn't want to stay near the Romulans any longer than necessary, paying the bills is necessary & collecting wreckage helps with that.

Anyway, here are the ships they brought & we captured:

2 SuperHawk-N carriers, a SparrowHawk-B carrier, a SkyHawk-B carrier, 4 SkyHawk-E Escorts, 2 SkyHawk-C PF tenders, a KD5R cruiser, a K5R Frigate, a Falcon Mauler, another KRT tug, and a SkyHawk-D minelayer, brought in case they need to tactically retreat.

Oh, and the 2 Dreadnoughts.

One was a Condor-V Heavy Carrier built on a Dreadnought hull, and retaining most of a Dreadnought's firepower and durability. This one was upgraded to the "Optimized Condor" standard.

And the other apparently got rushed into service for this attack.

It was a C8V purchased from the Klingons and not yet Romulanized into a KC8V.

Clearly, from all the parts they left aboard, they had started on that process, then hurriedly rushed it back into service, reattaching the Disruptors they had already taken out, since they didn't have time to finish altering it to accept Plasma Torpedo Launchers (which were already aboard and shoved out of the way & into storage space).

Our base looks like some kind of child's toy now with ship attached to ship, attached to another ship attached to the base.

As soon as we got everything secure, the tug resumed towing the base as fast as it could away from those crazy Romulans. Who knew what they'd try next.

And of course we did what we did before – scramble to get things repaired quickly, while readying new fighters and PF's from storage in the meantime, so we'll be as ready for combat as we can be, as fast as we can be.

Vindair's group is excited about all the new ROM's they'll be getting from these ships. He says having 'a larger data set' will let them break the encryption much faster & do so for all remaining ships' interlocks as well as cloaking codes, all at once.

That'll be nice.

All those boarding parties we used went back to the new crews they are training with and immediately commenced celebrating and telling inflated stories about their exploits.

That's good – it will help build a sense of camaraderie in the new crews.

That'll help them see themselves as a successful team. Believing that is an important part of achieving that.

I'm not so sure the Pilots' celebrations are as helpful.

Maybe, maybe not.

The ones now claiming to be Aces might be alienating the rest, or they might be inspiring them to greater efforts.

I mentioned that I thought you had to shoot down 5 enemy fighters in combat to be an ace, but they responded with a lengthy description of a complicated points system where you can get points for combat missions, scoring damage on enemy ships, downing enemy fighters, & many other things.

Whatever.

If they want to call themselves Aces, that's fine with me, as long as it doesn't turn out to be divisive.

We had a very big celebration over the victory, and over Admiral Andrews' consequent promotion.

We skipped his rank from Rear-Admiral, right past Vice-Admiral and straight to full Admiral, since he took what was certain defeat and turned it into a stunning victory.

There's no way we could have defeated as many ships, fighters and PF's as they brought without his great ideas and excellent execution of those ideas.

We're concerned now (more than ever, I mean) – they brought 17 ships, 96 fighters and 48 PF's, versus our 1 ship, mostly inactive base, and, as far as they knew when they made their force, 36 fighters and 15 PF's.

Of course we'd got more fighters and PF's online they didn't know about (and we're doing the same again – making sure captured ships are ready to launch fighters and PF's to bring our numbers even higher).

But it says a lot about how serious they are.

Luckily we're just days away from the edge of their territory.

That should help.

Captain's Log, Happy and Sad to see her!

Well, today our new Kzinti Tug arrived, which we christened Stubby.

She started helping tow Oz, as well as being upgraded while she tows.

We're going faster now and that's a relief.

We were very happy to see her.

And Vindair came to me in tears (you know Romulans are basically Vulcans that have embraced emotions, right?).

Well, he was embracing emotion today for sure!

He was frustrated, angry, near despondent, and brimming with excitement all at once.

See, he had gotten a chance to look over the ships we captured & in doing so, he noticed for the first time, that we'd captured a Falcon Mauler.

Oh boy did that set him off.

See, it turns out that the Falcon ship and hull were his family's design and pet project way back when, but what was supposed to be a triumphal design turned out more or less opposite that because of politics.

Romulan Navy research had just invented the Mauler weapon and needed a big ship hull to put it on.

Well, despite his family's best efforts, the Romulan Navy ruined the Falcon design by devoting it to a huge inefficient early version of the Mauler weapon.

That made the whole ship so inefficient that the hull design was never used again, which really bothers Vindair.

He said it was supposed to be the BattleCruiser sized hull they never had & It would have been a good one too.

And apart from the straightforward BattleCruiser design, Vindair always wanted to make a carrier on the hull & use the space efficiently – without an inefficient Mauler weapon.

For example, just in the space where they put battery banks it should have had fighter bays – 36 of them would have fit in the same space they used for batteries (in 6 bays of 6 so they could launch quickly).

That's 3 full squadrons!

And in the space wasted by the Mauler, it was going to have 2 Plasma Torpedo Type R and 2 Type G, a few Phasers, plus all the stuff ships regularly have, like crew spaces, shuttle bays & so on, which were mostly left out of the Falcon Mauler due to space used on the Mauler and its battery banks, plus inefficient space usage generally.

Now the Maulers that came later, such as our KRM's, are much more compact and efficient, but Vindair doesn't like Maulers after they ruined (as he sees it) the Falcon's chances to be the best hull design the Romulans ever had.

See, Vindair showed me drawings & calculations that said the Falcon actually has 2.94 times as much internal volume as the Eagle, on which hull is built the War Eagle light cruiser and the King Eagle cruiser.

He begged me – well no, Romulans do not beg. They have too much pride for that.

But, as far as Romulans can, he begged me to let him ' tear out the monstrosity' and make it match the family's original specs for a BattleCruiser, or better yet, let him make it into the heavy carrier he always wanted to.

It was my pleasure to say yes, both to make him happy and because the ship will be far more useful when it's done.

He immediately launched into a happy discussion of the tech advances that will let him put on bigger engines, a couple Plasma-F launchers and a couple Phaser 3's just as was done for the Hawk and Eagle hulls.

I did interject and ask if we could get Gatling Phasers instead of Phaser 3's and some Hydran-style launch tubes.

He was only too happy to oblige.

He eagerly talked about it for an hour before hurrying off to get started.

Captain's Log, Stardate Safety?

Well, today we passed the end of the Romulan Neutral Zone.

See, it isn't a neutral zone if it's not between two semi-hositle powers.

So Romulan territorial claims go only so far & we passed those.

We still have Federation territory on our right and will for some time, but we're in unclaimed space at the edge of the galaxy, which extends to our left...until the next galaxy starts, I guess.

Anyway, why is it unclaimed?

Because it's so empty there's no point in claiming it.

So we need supplies shipped to us, since we can't stop off locally and get them.

Well, after what happened to Kondor, we switched things up and now have our Priority Transport Service (that's our cargo PF's, remember) delivering to us.

Well we now have 3 flotillas operating in that service, so it's not as big a deal to have one spend some of its time bringing us supplies.

And we're glad we did, since another cargo transport method would probably not have withstood today's attack.

See, Cargo Flotilla 2 was approaching Oz with supplies for us when a Romulan patrol de-cloaked and accosted them. The Romulans were smart – they neither tried to board nor closed in closer than range 10 – just paced us, to the side, from there. Now most PF's can't do anything to you past range 10, and very little at that range.

And Hydran PF's are normally far worse off than that – while they shred things inside range 1 better than anything else does, they are almost completely helpless beyond range 2.

Almost.

But remember Paw was concerned about that and changed our PF design long ago?

Well, these Romulans either didn't know that or didn't remember. They saw our flotilla as cargo PF's, since they were clearly running cargo, and they assumed they were as weak as cargo PF's normally are (that is, missing 2/3 of their weapons).

But remember ours have full weapons & use cargo packs instead of the regular approach?

Well, the Romulans didn't know that either.

So they made threats we couldn't live with, and the firing began on both sides.

We fired 6 Plasma Torpedo Type F at them, which they totally didn't expect.

Now they had 2 KF5RB Frigates (more F5's they bought from the Klingons, a lot like the K5R's we'd recently captured, but with a different configuration of Plasma Torpedoes), and one KRC Command Cruiser (a Klingon D7C Command Cruiser they bought and converted – they use those a lot: we already captured one a few battles ago) and between them they launched 4 Plasma Torpedo Type S, and 2 Type F, at us.

They saved their Phasers to shoot at our Plasma Torpedoes. They hadn't expected us to have Plasmas, so they didn't have Wild Weasels ready.

Well, we shot at their Torpedoes and they shot at ours. But we have Gatling Phasers and they don't.

Each of our PF's has enough Gatling Phasers to completely shoot down a Plasma S, and we did so, leaving a couple Gatlings unfired since we didn't need them yet – Plasma F's don't take as much shooting down as Type S do.

Now, their frigates were smart and could see they weren't the target, so they moved so they could shoot our Plasma Torpedoes as they passed, first with their forward Phasers & then with their rear Phasers.

The cruiser added what it had, but all told they just dropped our warhead strength by 46, while 44 damage got through.

That burned through the cruiser's reinforced shield and did 10 damage internally.

It takes about 85 internal hits to blow up one of those, so you can see he was hurt, but not too badly.

Well, then they fired a second volley of Plasma Torpedoes: 4 Type S, and 2 Type F, again.

They could do that because each launcher has one PPT (Pseudo Plasma Torpedo – a decoy) that it can use.

So half of their Torpedoes were fake, but we could tell which ones. Maybe it was the ones we'd just shot down, or the ones that were coming now, or a mix.

Luckily Pseudo-fighters are nimble & we'd managed to turn and open the range just a bit by the time the Torpedoes arrived, so now their warheads had dropped in strength a bit: from 30 down to 22 for the Type S, and from 15 down to 10 for the Type F. And we still had enough Gatling firepower left to drop the warheads by 30, all told. So we weakened some as best we could, trying to spread it out so nobody was doomed if a real Torpedo hit them.

Then we braced for impact and prayed for the best.

Well both of the 2 Plasma F's were real, and each almost knocked out the reinforced shield it hit.

And 2 of the Plasma S were real. Each of those knocked down the reinforced shield and did 4 internal damage.

Now since a PF only takes about 18 damage before it blows up, you can see they were about as hurt as that Command Cruiser was.

As soon as those hit though, the nimble little PF's turned back and closed the range again. Then enemy couldn't dodge away before that happened.

And then, well before anyone's Phasers could fire again, we launched our 2nd wave of Plasma F's.

See our PF's carry two, but no PF can stand the shock of firing both at once – you have to wait a bit for vibrations to die down.

Anyway, because one PF was a scout, it only had one Plasma F, so our second wave was just 5 Torpedoes. We targeted 3 on the cruiser and 2 on a frigate. All of them hit, and the enemy decided to leave.

But the cruiser was badly hurt – more than half dead, so he moved really slowly and our PF Leader caught him quick and boarded him.

You know how that ended.

And the frigate we hit was hurt enough to go slower than he wanted to, so while there was a brief stern chase, we caught him. Sure, he plinked away at us a bit with his rear-facing Phaser 2's, but Phaser 2's don't do much beyond range 3, so it just chipped away at our shields a bit.

By the time we were close enough for Phaser 2's to do real damage, our Gatlings were close enough to reciprocate and then some. So he was sensible and surrendered.

Now things got a little awkward logistically, since our PF's are too small to tow ships back to base. Luckily, Kondor was repaired enough to go out and get the 2 surrendered ships & bring them back before any more Romulans showed up.

We really have got to learn to randomize our PPT launch timing better – we'd been prepared to launch them as a 2nd wave, but then realized that doing so was pointless, since the enemy had already used all their defenses.

We'll work on that.


	10. Chapter 10

Captain's Log, Stardate Well don't that beat all.

People are continually amazing.

Today our naughty selves almost got arrested. "Almost", that is, assuming we were stupid enough to go along with it.

See, apparently the Romulan Empire thinks we've been bad, so they called up the Federation Police and told on us, saying we needed to be arrested so we'd learn not to do it again.

So, a Federation Police Frigate came up to us, got exactly in our way, stopped, and called us up saying "Stop, in the name of the law".

My response was, of course "No. Anything you need to say, you can say while we're moving".

Well, he got pushy and officious, to which I responded "I remain unmotivated. How about you try your 'talking to equals' voice instead of your 'correcting naughty children' voice".

Now our tugs and base are still on a collision course with him and getting nearer, but he seemed to think that was in his favor – that it'd make us stop.

Anyway, my response apparently left him unfavorably impressed, and he got downright rude, and even used implied threats.

Well, I'd had it with him, so I said "you have no power over me, because I give you none. And you haven't got the force to take it.".

Then I ended the call, shoved his little self off to the side with a Tractor Beam, launched half a dozen fighters to see him on his way, and kept right on going as I had been.

He left, but I don't think he was happy about it.

I guess the Federation is far more concerned about trying to please the Romulans than they are with bending a few of their own laws at our expense.

I suppose I can see that – they've had several nasty wars with the Romulans and none with us.

Now don't get me wrong about the Feds – there are 'good guy' empires and 'bad guy' empires, and the Feds, for all their faults, rank high among the good guys.

The Feds, the Gorns, and the Hydrans are all definitely Good Guys.

The Kzinti are mostly Good Guys, though I seem to recall mentioning that they like to fight, so that randomizes things a bit.

And the Romulans, Klingons, Lyrans, and Tholians are definitely Bad Guys.

Some in the Federation want to see the Tholians as downtrodden underdogs, so they try to help them out.

But they forget the reason they are currently weak is that they got thrown out of the galaxy they used to rule – thrown out because they were way too harsh to put up with.

No, they are definitely bad guys.

Then there are some minor players like WYN, LDR, and Seltorians. They're mostly interested in their own business, since they're too small to afford time for much else.

Some want to see the Seltorians as Bad Guys, since they are here to exterminate the Tholians.

See, they chased them down from the galaxy they both originated from. That's how bad they hate the Tholians.

But the Seltorians nice to everybody else, and if they're telling the truth, then the Tholians were bad enough to deserve it.

I don't know – that's between them.

Then there are the Jindarians who are bad or good depending on the group you get. You never know in advance with them.

See, they don't have a central government, but live in clans that travel in what they call caravans, but we'd call fleets.

Some act one way & some another. Some are aggressive & some are peaceful.

Anyway, While the Feds are mostly Good Guys, that doesn't stop them from being really officious about their laws, including overreaching them sometimes. And sometimes they are stupidly bureaucratic.

Still, they are good at fighting when they choose to, so we are taking precautions.

Captain's Log, Stardate Second Verse, same as the First!

Well apparently the message I thought I gave Police Lieutenant Muldoon isn't the same one he thought he received.

I thought I'd said 'Go away, Don't bother me', and it looks like he thought I said "just bring more force with you next time".

So he did.

It's only been a few days since he showed up in his little Police Frigate and tried to arrest us, and already he is back, with 29 other Police Frigates and 2 Police Cruisers.

Either they think we'll be awed because they are police, or they don't know just what forces we have.

He called me up, but I spoke first, in a cheerful voice, as you'd talk to a friend, I said. "Police Lieutenant Muldoon – what an unexpected surprise!'

Well he wasn't interested in playing that game & responded "We're here to compel your proper civil behavior."

I wasn't done playing with him yet, so I said "How right you are! I should have invited you all in for lunch. While we didn't plan for this many, I'm sure we can accommodate – Do come in"

Apparently he doesn't have a sense of humor.

He got all rude and demanding.

I listened for a minute, then cut him off with "Officer, you're trying to be a bully. And while I'm sure you can get away with that inside your empire, I will remind you that you're well outside its jurisdiction right now. You are, in fact engaged in an act of piracy according to international treaties which your government has signed. And those treaties say I can respond to such piracy with whatever level of force I deem appropriate, and then sell your ships, or their wreckage. Shut up and think about that. In the meantime, I have retained a Federation Law Firm who are on the other line and would like to speak with you. I'll put them through."

Whereupon I transferred the call, hung up my end, and launched 96 fighters and 49 Pseudo-fighters, which just circled his ships until he figured it out and left.

Sure, I could have shot them all down and legally been in the right. But you don't want to piss off the Federation if you can avoid it.

And, like any empire, they ignore any and all laws when they feel like it.

But, ironically, if you go about it right, sometimes they follow laws very diligently.

So I wasn't kidding about the Law Firm.

I'd hired the best one in the Federation and we will be pursuing it in their courts. Our avenue of attack is this:

We are not a Federation company: we never incorporated there, we have no fixed assets there, and they have no jurisdiction over us. In fact the Federation permits which some of our ships hold (to travel in their space and do business while armed), are the same kind of permits that are granted to the ships of foreign nations.

And that's the status we'll be going for – a foreign nation. Not one based on territory and planets as usual, but one based on trade and ships.

The Lawyers sound optimistic.

I hope so.

They sure are charging a lot. I'm not sure they don't count as pirates too, in some ways.

Captain's Log, Stardate Breakthrough.

Well today Vindair and his whole team of WhizKids (so many they spill way out into the hallway, but they all wanted to be here and in on it) came to my office with the biggest grin on his face I've ever seen anywhere.

With great fanfare, he and his guys announced they'd broken the Romulan Encryption.

That means that all the captured ships which were unusable because they'd set their interlocks, are now usable.

All of them.

It also means that all our Romulan ships can now cloak.

This is a big deal.

I gave them all the praise I could manage, plus bonuses, holidays, and any other rewards I could think of.

This will change a lot of things.

But in the short run it means we need to recruit and train crews even faster. We've been moving as fast as we could, but will need to find ways to accelerate that now.

Idle ships are a money pit and we want to get these working for us as soon as we can.

The Hydrans have expressed interest in a Flotilla, since their border clashes with the Lyrans are escalating.

And there are places we could send small task forces (say, 2-3 frigates or similar) to escort convoys of ships.

There is much to do.

I'm proud of my guys. I told them that, but will keep telling them so, often, for a long time.

But the first thing we did was get those 2 captured KRT tugs helping tow Oz.

We're going a lot faster now.

Captain's log, Stardate Watchdog

So it was business as usual for a couple days – making trade deals, setting up sales for ships, domes, and other things we produce, and arranging brokers for same.

Also working on various ship repairs and upgrades, including especially upgrading the base to a StarBase.

Plus crew training, for all the new ships, and hiring for same, and coordinating the trading of our Q-ships in areas 1 and 2, expanding their routes, arranging the sales of the pirate ships they capture (yes, there are still a steady stream of minor pirates that attack them and either get captured or blown away – it's hardly worth mentioning most of them).

So we're pretty busy, when along comes a Federation Fleet.

Not a small one either.

It has a Dreadnought, 2 Heavy Carriers, 3 Strike Carriers, and a couple dozen cruisers and destroyers.

We scrambled Fighters, PF's and over a dozen of our captured Romulan ships. The crews on those ships aren't fully ready yet, but when you need them, you need them.

But the Feds are not the Romulans: they didn't attack.

Maybe the amount of force we got ready gave them second thoughts, or maybe they were just there as a show of force themselves.

In any case, they just flew along parallel to us, at a distance & just barely inside their own territory.

They launched fighters and conducted drills with them, but they all stayed inside their own territory.

So we conducted a lot of drills too, varying which Romulan ships we used, to keep them guessing as to just how many were active and able to fight.

The situation seems stable.

Stable enough that we sent off a couple more ships to join Admiral Connors.

Now it's tough to part with any ships while the Federation fleet is there and we're not sure if they'll start something. But with anything in life you have to weigh risks and in this case, sending a few more ships seems best.

See, under the current contract with the LDR, Admiral Connors more or less has to do what the LDR says to do. That isn't working out as well as it could – the Andromedans are mostly doing commerce raiding right now, apparently trying to wreck the economy before they invade.

So it basically works out that they're spotted in one place, Admiral Connors is ordered there, & races there, only to find the Andromedans long gone.

Then they're spotted in another place & he gets ordered there & the cycle repeats.

They can move a lot faster than us somehow, but only in-between fights.

Now Admiral Connors is very frustrated. He insists he can do a lot better if he's left to do things his way & judged by results.

And while the LDR are frustrated too, the only way we could get them to renegotiate was by offering to send a significant addition to our TJSN forces.

So all that's done – we renegotiated, the ships are on their way, and Connors can do things his way.

But we had to send 6 more ships to make the deal. And not just any ships – The ROC Dreadnought, the KillerHawk BattleCruiser, and 4 KingEagles (the former WarEagles, now almost done upgrading to KingEagles, won't be far behind them).

With those ships, Task Force one got renamed Fleet 1. Their crews aren't as trained as we'd like them yet, but they are adequate and will be training as they go, and even after they arrive.

They're loaded down with all the PF's they can carry too – all their tractor beams have Mech Links for that, as will all the rest of our ships.

PF's are effective.

We've been impressed.

We're working on organizing Fleet 2 under Admiral Andrews. We still have a lot of ships available for it.

And speaking of names and lots of ships - that reminds me - you probably don't want to read long lists of ship names here, so I'll just mention the ones that need mentioning, as unusual or interesting things happen.

And speaking of unusual and interesting events, Captain Albrecht got attacked yesterday in an unusual way.

See, most ships see our Q-Ships as normal freighters and leave them alone.

Pirates of course want to profit from them, so they try to capture them one way or another.

But Andromedans are different.

They're basically at war with our galaxy and they don't seem to distinguish between navy ships and civilian ships - they're at war with all ships and nations.

So an Andromedan Python Heavy Destroyer sees Albatross and heads straight for her.

Well, this is a problem, since that's one tough ship which can easily take all that Albatross can dish out.

But it isn't just Albatross fighting alone, since she has 5 fighters.

So Captain Albrecht fires his drones at the Andromedan Destroyer, knowing that he'll shoot most of them down, but that it'll take all his Phasers to do it. Well, the Andromedan shot down 6 of the 7 drones. The other one hit for 12, but he can absorb 60 & had dissipated all 12 harmlessly into space before we could do any more.

Anyway, the moment that Andromedan had used up his Phasers, our captain launched his fighters and scatter pack shuttles - he'd waited since the Andromedan was going to shoot something & he'd rather lose drones than fighters.

The Andromedan was still too far away for our Plasma F to help, but Captain Albrecht was ready to use it when the moment came.

Well that Python shot and destroyed both our scatter-pack shuttles, using its long range Tractor-Repulsor beams.

That sneaky Andromedan either guessed right or had some way to scan them and see what they were.

But our fighters closed in and we launched a second wave of drones.

Then just as our fighters were almost in range to shoot at him, the Python did a high energy turn to face the other direction, as if he was going to run.

At the same time, he used his displacement device on himself to pop in behind our fighters.

Now he was facing them and they'd have to turn before they faced him and could shoot him.

Well that sneaky Andromedan had been planning on that and took advantage of it. He shot our fighters & took out two with Tractor-repulsor beams and crippled the other 3 with Phaser 2 fire.

Meanwhile he shot down 3 of our second wave of drones as they came up behind him. The other 4 hit him, doing 48 damage, so while he can absorb up to 40 on his rear panels, he did take 8 internal damage.

But that didn't impair him as far as we could tell.

While he was doing that, our fighters turned and fired Gatling Phasers. Well they did 46 damage between them to his front power absorbers, but he can absorb 60 in those and he'd emptied out the previous 12, so it didn't bother him yet.

You can see why folks fear to fight Andromedans - he had taken very little actual damage despite being hit quite a bit.

Worse - if given a short time he'd be able to empty his panels again.

Anyway, Albatross fired both its Phaser 1's at him, but at that range they only did another 2 points to his rear panels. Those were internals again, but again we didn't see him lose any fighting effectiveness yet.

Well to this point things look pretty bad for us, don't they? But Captain Albrecht had been accelerating towards the Andromedan the whole time & was now close enough to fire his Plasma F. He did so, and there his good judgment came in again - he'd fired at long range, so it only did 10 points of damage, but those 10 were enough.

The enemy's rear panels had been filled & not yet drained, so this did enough internal damage to take out some Power Absorbers and start an explosive cascade.

The Andromedan Heavy Destroyer exploded.

If Captain Albrecht had waited a tiny bit longer to fire the Plasma F, its warhead would have been stronger, but by then the Andromedan would have bled off some energy from his panels, making him able to absorb more.

And worse, he'd have been able to fire again, which would have done serious hurt to us.

So it was a bit of a gamble to fire the F Torp then, but all battles require weighing risks like that, and once again Captain Albrecht judged things correctly.

While defeating an Andromedan Heavy Destroyer was an impressive achievement for a Q-ship, things weren't over yet.

It seems an Orion Pirate had been lurking in the area inside a small ion storm, and came out and attacked the Albatross just as her 3 crippled fighters finished landing.

The Orion had been watching, so that blew our cover and revealed us as a q-ship.

So the Orion took the opportunity to try to make the galaxy just a bit safer for piracy, and take out Albatross while she was weakened.

Well this particular Orion was a Salvage Cruiser (sort of a mobile chop-shop – it can strip valuable components off a defeated ship & haul them away for sale) armed with more drones than usual, and she fired a full spread at us from beyond the effective range of anything but our own drones.

Now that was 6 incoming drones, which is a lot for most ships, and enough to swamp the defenses on many ships this size.

And the Orion had waited until our last fighter had landed, Or should I say crash-landed, and none could launch again until repaired, so we were limited to just the ship for this fight.

Well now long range drone duels often go like this: each side fires a full spread, then negates the enemy's drones with a Wild Weasel.

Both sides repeat until one runs out of Wild Weasels and dies. They keep one Wild Weasel ready & one ready in advance, then charge up replacements as needed. If you charge them up too early, you waste energy & energy management is important in a battle.

Well, Captain Albrecht knew he couldn't win such a battle, having just lost most of his shuttles to the Andromedan.

But I did mention he is a master of timing and positioning?

Now drones are good at shooting down other drones, so Captain Albrecht didn't fire his drones until the Orion fired his, then he fired 3.

He is a sneaky one, is Fred Albrecht, and knew that the Orion would have had trouble counting drones from within the ion storm he'd been hiding in – so he couldn't be sure how many we'd been using against the Andromedan.

So as usual, the way Fred fought was partly with weapons, and partly by giving the enemy false impressions and leading him to make the conclusions you want him to make, such as the conclusion that we haven't got enough drones to swamp his defenses.

So the Orion's drones arrive at Albatross & we fire Phasers to shoot down 4 of them.

Now that's a gamble – what we're doing is firing Phaser 1's twice each but with lower energy – so they hit with the energy of a Phaser 3. That way we get 4 shots from our Phaser 1's and each one has about a 5/6ths chance of shooting down a drone.

Well, it worked and we got all 4, then held the other 2 drones immobile in tractor beams.

That got the enemy thinking we would hold back drones from future volleys so we could use them to shoot down his drones.

And that, in turn made it less likely he would be really careful to keep Wild Weasels ready.

But anyway, our drones got close, then MIRV'ed (See, MIRV stands for Multiple Independently-Targeted Re-entry Vehicles – we're not sure where the term came from, or how what sounds like a noun changed into a verb, but that's the term that's used & we go along).

What that means is that each drone (also called Multi-Warhead drones) releases 3 smaller drones (a double space drone would release 5), called Dogfight drones, since they're mostly used to shoot at fighters.

Now those small Dogfight drones do 8 damage to fighters, but only a quarter of that to ships – just 2 points each.

We like to use them because it gives the enemy headaches trying to shoot them down, and because it's too much damage to ignore.

See, those 3 drones turned into 9 dogfight drones, which would do 18 damage to the Orion. That'd about knock down his front shield, and he couldn't afford that.

So as they arrived he shot them down.

Well, mostly he did.

See, he had 4 Phaser 1's and fired them at low-power just like we did. That shot down 8 of the 9, and he held the last one in a tractor-beam.

Then Captain Albrecht fired his other 4 drone launchers.

The Orion seemed surprised to see them & had no choice but to launch a Wild Weasel.

But the moment our drones had blown that up, Captain Albrecht surprised the Orion and fired 3 more.

See, there are several types of drone racks, but we favor Type C, since they get to fire twice as often.

And Type C drone racks are what Albatross used here.

Well, the Orion had no choice but to launch his other Wild Weasel – he'd used his Phasers and they hadn't cycled yet.

Neither had his own drone racks.

So he couldn't shoot anything down yet - he could take the damage and lose his front shield, or he could use his second Wild Weasel, which he did.

He may have thought himself in the clear then, but he was facing Captain Fred Albrecht.

Very few commanders could manage to get the timing and positioning exactly right so he could get a 4th wave of drones in before the enemy could respond.

But Fred could and did.

And our 4th wave was not MIRV drones anymore.

No, these were standard explosive drones.

Fred had judged that the enemy no longer had any response open to him but to take the drones on the chin, and he was right.

What's more, three of the 4 were double-space drones, which do 24 damage each (we hadn't had time to reload everything since the Andromedan fight, so had to make do for that 4th drone).

So they hit that Salvage Cruiser, took down its shield-reinforcement, it's shield, and then gutted the ship.

All of a sudden, that Orion was a drifting hulk.

Then we shot down the 2 drones we were still holding in our tractor beams.

When we approached and boarded the Orion, we found that it was modified – it had swapped it's rear Phaser 3's for more drone launchers (Captain Albrecht had suspected as much and adjusted his plans as he went), and it had 2 extra shuttles on board, but it also had a very unusual weapon installed – an SFG (Stasis Field Generator).

The Klingons invented those, but there isn't anything anywhere that the Orions haven't stolen some examples of.

Anyway, the SFG can put nearby things (typically one, but up to 3) in a stasis field, where no time passes.

It costs a lot of energy to use, and that goes up the longer you hold it, which is probably why the Orion had also augmented his engines by 20%. But it can be very useful in certain situations. Like say for example, your ally is about to be hit by Plasma Torpedoes – you can put him in stasis & the Torps will detonate harmlessly on the edge of the field.

Then you release him and continue the fight.

You get the idea.

Anyway, this was an unusual enough weapon we decided to haul the ship back to Oz for examination & repair (yes, surprisingly enough it was repairable).

While we are repairing it, we'll put in a spare cloaking device, since we have some available and they are useful.

We have several we captured from the Romulans, mostly in PF's we destroyed & salvaged.

And since it needs extensive repairs, we'll try out a new thing. See, most fleets have seen the need for more tugs and answered it by making "Light Tactical Transports", which is where they take a light cruiser hull, strip out most of the weapons it is designed to have to make room for cargo, and add structural bracing and connectors so it can tow a pod like a tug can.

Well I don't see the need to strip out any weapons – cargo space is what the pod if for.

But we will do the rest of the procedure to add the ability to tow a pod.

That'll give it a commercial utility to deliver bigger cargoes, as well as the ability to carry military pods if needed.

Bringing it back works out two ways, since it was time to bring Captain Albrecht back anyway. Or I should say Commodore Albrecht, since he'll be in charge of 3rd fleet – training it the rest of the way, then leading it in operations.

In other news, we finalized the last crew swap with the Romulans – where they pay to get their guys back.

At least we hope it is the last.

We got a lot of money from it, and we have a lot of things to spend it on.

First we're going to do some upgrades we've been putting off.

All the ships we captured from the Romulans, which they first purchased from the Klingons, are all going to get the following upgrades: We'll swap all Phaser 2's for Gatling Phasers. And we'll swap all Phaser 3's and Antidrone Launchers for Drone Launchers (see, drones can shoot down drones too, but also do much more. Antidrones are of limited use). Though if the ship had no Phaser 2's, we'll make sure she gets at least 2 Gatling Phasers anyway, by swapping Phaser 3's for them.

Also, when the Romulans converted them to their technology after buying them, they removed their existing drone launchers and didn't do anything important with the space.

They also removed the Klingon Security Stations and likewise didn't use the space well.

Vindair can tell us how to undo those changes.

So we'll restore the drone launchers as drone launchers. And in the space that was formerly Security Stations, we'll install fighter bays.

Those have come in handy more times than I can count.

Plus we'll add the same upgrades that all our other TJSN ships get – fit in a mine rack and 2 barracks, a Scout Sensor, swap out the probe launcher for a drone launcher (and give them some stored probe drones), and put mechanical linkages on all tractor beams to support PF's.

Then, since both KRT tugs we captured came with only cargo pods attached, and since sometimes you want them to fight instead of carrying cargo, we talked to our Kzinti contacts and bought the rights to build Battle Pods and Carrier Pods, plus the plans to do so.

So we'll be building 3 pairs of those – a set for our Kzinti tug, and 1 set each, adapted to fit them, for the two KRT tugs.

We'll build them slightly altered, similar to the above – a Drone Launcher instead of an Antidrone launcher, lose the Phaser 3's in favor of Gatling Phasers and so on.

And for the Battle Pods, we'll drop the Disruptors in favor of Plasma Torpedo Type G.

We'll also look at the Plasma F's on the KRT's themselves to see if we can upgrade them to Plasma G's, since they look like they'd have the bracing and energy to handle that.

The carrier pods will get Hydran-style launch tubes too.

The tugs will carry Battle and Carrier pods while towing the base - they certainly can't benefit from cargo pods when they are stuck with the base & unable to deliver cargo.

It's a lot of work, but we don't want to send out something that isn't up to our standards. Those standards have served us well.

Weapons swaps go quickly, so it shouldn't delay these ships being ready.

You may be wondering Why Plasma G's over Plasma F's given I previously spoke poorly of Plasma G's?

Well, while Plasma G's do the same damage & have just a little more range, it was pointed out that they have 3 advantages over Plasma F's - they can be charged as enveloping Plasmas or shotgun Plasmas (shooting out two Plasma F Torpedoes, though at different targets than each other), and they can quick-charge a Plasma F Torpedo in two thirds the time it'd normally take.

That gives us some flexibility, so we're going with that where we can.

Now Plasma F launchers normally have the huge advantage of having a stored Torpedo in a stasis box, but we've already duplicated that, as I mentioned before, so there's no reason not to go with type G.

Anyway, we're also buying 4 new Q-ships to work Area 1, since all our existing Q-ships are keeping busy now & we have more potential trade, so need 4 more.

I like the Sopwiths, so I'll at least tell you those names.

They are Sopwiths: Antelope, Bee, Gnu, and Sparrow. They are all newly built Hydran Q-ships.

We're also building more of our cargo PF's for the Priority transport business.

And we'll be building at least 4 more Large Prospecting ships, since that business is going very well.


	11. Chapter 11

Captain's Log, Stardate Its nice to have company

So it's been a couple weeks already & the Federation fleet is still shadowing us.

We figure it's probably there to impress us with the need to play nice – as if we weren't going to.

We have no interest in picking a fight with the feds.

But, during the time they've been there, there have been no further Romulan attacks, raids, or attempts to mess with ships coming to our base.

We suppose the Romulans are concerned that maybe the nearby Fed fleet would intervene. In any case, things have been nice and peaceful.

The Feds still do some military exercises with their fleet. And we do a lot of the same with ours – we need the training anyway.

So they say familiarity breeds contempt.

Well, not exactly, but we did 'get cheeky' with them a bit.

See, fleets on the move need replenishment. And there is a history thousands of years long for merchants of various kinds to follow armies selling them the things they need.

Well, we are merchants and they are an army (well, a navy anyway).

So we did the equivalent of selling donuts and drinks to people who are standing in a long line. We sent a couple of the Free Traders we built, over to their fleet and sold them miscellaneous supplies, confections, trinkets, souvenirs, & anything else their sailors wanted to buy.

Things were a touch tense at first, but they thawed out soon enough and we sold out of everything we'd brought.

Plus we now have a long list of things they'd like us to sell them.

Our new fabs are making some of them, we're buying others for re-sale, & cooking up still others. It should be a nice side business, as long as it lasts.

And speaking of side businesses – we're hauling along asteroids again, to mine them as we go.

The prospecting ships have launched & are now at work, and we're building more, but the side business where we use the silicon, which rocks are mostly made of, to make armor-glass domes & spheres for people to use as habitats (which we've started calling Habs) – that business is going so well we can't keep up.

Especially since we have our own needs in that area now.

See, there's all those folks we're hiring for ship crews, and many of them have families they'd like to keep nearby.

In fact, there are quite a few who won't hire on unless they can keep their family within at least a couple parsecs of themselves, so they can visit often.

So what to do?

Well, for now at least, we're making a couple Habs (habitation spheres) for ourselves to use.

And we're no longer limited to making just the dome or sphere.

Our fabs can turn out the life-support equipment & everything else you need for apartments, shops and so on – everything it needs to be a working city.

So the spheres will be small cities, even able to grow their own food.

We'll tow along two for a while until we find a better solution.

We're calling them Thing One and Thing Two until someone thinks of a better name. For now at least, it's working well - we have lots of folks living there already.

We passed an interesting cluster of big rocks today.

They are far enough out the Federation fleet will not have seen them. They look like they are previously undiscovered, and like there are some very good mining opportunities there.

But none of our people want to stay, unsupported, and mine them. We marked them so we can send some folks back later.

Captain's Log Try Try again.

Well it seems that Officer Muldoon is a persistent soul who still likes the idea of arresting us.

But it had occurred to us that that might be the case.

So today I got a call from the private detective agency we've had watching Muldoon.

They said he's trying to get enough other police ships signed up with him that they can come out and arrest us despite the forces at our disposal (the ones he knows about anyway).

He already has a little over 150 police frigates and cruisers signed up.

Well, we made some calls & had our private investigators talk to our lawyers, who then talked to a judge, who, in turn, talked to Officer Muldoon.

Apparently the Officer wasn't happy with that talk.

He got hit with a cease-and-desist order, a restraining order, and a long talking-to by the judge, who apparently informed him that he was significantly overstepping his authority and thereby in danger of incarceration should he continue.

So there seems to be a good chance that he won't be coming to visit us and issuing rude demands anymore.

But just in case, that detective agency is still on the job.

At least the 150 ships got dispersed and back to doing their actual jobs.

While talking to our lawyers I got updated on our court case – the one to grant us foreign nation status in the Federation's eyes.

It sounds to me like nothing is happening, but the lawyers assure me that it is actually going very well.

Theirs is a very different world, I guess.

In other news, you know we've been training lots of crews as fast as we could, and doing pretty well at it too.

So originally, we started out using the new ships themselves as classrooms, then expanded to using every spare inch of Oz & now have had to build a new Habitation Sphere to house our schools.

We named it Trader Joe Campus & I'll tell you why in a minute.

See, we realized that while we've been getting new crews ready for our ships, there are two sides to this - the flip side is that we are becoming very good at training – we're gaining a strong base of skilled trainers, solid lesson plans, good simulators and simulations etc.

So someone asked why not turn that into a business too?

What possible answer could there be to that, given who we are, but 'yes'?

See, there are a lot of ships out there & many folks want to run freighters, yachts, free traders etc, or hire on to help crew those, and we'll provide training to any who want to pay for it.

But since the Federation is nearby, and many of our students will come from there, we want to work around any difficulties that may cause.

And the name is one of them.

The Federation gets all bothered about certain specific names – if you call yourself a "University" then you must (in their minds anyway) jump through certain hoops, get accredited by other universities & all kinds of rigmarole like that.

It takes years & we just don't see the value in it.

The same is true if you want to call yourself an "academy" a "school" or a host of other things.

So we settled for the generic word "campus" which can mean many things.

Not that the Federation has any hold over us directly – we could call ourselves whatever we want.

But the Federation will have a hold over many of our students, who could have problems if they say they graduated from a "University" that the Federation says isn't a "University".

We don't care what other schools may think of us. Rather, we care that our graduates will know how to run ships – how to operate them, navigate them, maintain them, repair them, and so on.

They will stand up to any practical tests of what they know. And eventually our reputation will count for something too.

That's what matters – not accreditation which takes forever, costs tons, and gives them way too much control over us anyway.

We've already started advertising our campus.

That's complicated a bit by the fact that we're still moving – it may make us look less respectable & be a little harder to reach.

But that will pass.

We're almost to the end of the Federation border already.

And we're swinging a bit wider into inter-galactic space, so we don't pass too close to the Tholians, whose territory is next.

And as far as looking respectable goes, at least Oz looks like a StarBase now, and that should help.

The upgrade isn't complete by any means – there's a lot of work still to do on the inside. But from the outside we look like a regular StarBase.

Well, ok, one with a triangular hat, since our original base station core is attached there, full of busy fabrication units and workshops.

Captain's Log, Stardate Transition

Yes, today we passed the end of Federation space.

The Tholians detected us and sent out a small fleet to investigate us.

See, they're really concerned about their former subjects coming to this galaxy, finding them, and taking their revenge – more than the Seltorians anyway, who are already here and working on exactly that.

The Tholians must have been pretty rough on folks to have inspired that level of animosity. Traveling from one galaxy to another is not a quick and easy thing.

In any case, the Tholians came near enough to see what we have, then hurried back behind their webs.

See, the Tholians have a defensive forcefield called a web.

They string it along between 2 ships, or a ship and an anchor point like an asteroid, and anything that contacts it gets stuck in it.

They can move through it and fire through it as if it wasn't there, but nobody else can.

They frequently encircle bases with concentric layers of webs, making it very hard to attack them. Ships that try get stuck in the outer layer & get shot at while waiting for the web to weaken, which they do if not supplied with energy, but it takes a while.

Now it is often the case that someone who is really good at defense, is not very good at offense & that's true with the Tholians. They don't have a lot of ships & they tend to keep them inside their "Holdfast" which is what they call their territory.

What patrolling they do at the edge of their territory is mostly done by Pseudo-Fighters, which are easy to replace if you lose them.

But far more dramatic than a glimpse of the Tholians outside their holdfast is the latest news from Admiral Connors.

The extra ships we sent him got there, and that activated his new contract with the LDR, where he is judged only by results.

And boy did he deliver results.

See, he took a bit of a risk and split his ships into task forces 2-4 ships in size, with each task force made of a mix of ships that should still be able to take out any Andromedans they are likely to meet.

He split up like that to get better results, even though it is a risk, because we need the LDR contract and they were getting frustrated with us.

What's more, our reputation as a navy is at stake. Our reputation will affect both the likelihood of other contracts, as well as the rate they will pay.

And, that said, he minimized the risk pretty well - each task force has detailed instructions on what to do in various circumstances: If facing too strong an enemy, they are to call for help, cloak, evade, & leave mines.

Then they're to shadow the enemy to learn their habits, where they go etc.

But as valuable as that information is, the shadowing is mainly in case help arrives in time to gang-up and defeat the enemy.

What's more, each task force goes around with some of its ships cloaked.

So the Andromedans tend to get overconfident & charge what they see, then get shot from behind by what they didn't see.

Then whichever group they charge, that group will cloak while the other keeps firing. And when they turn around to fight, that group will cloak and the other uncloak and start firing.

Connors says wolves fight like that – you can never get at the ones in front of you, no matter how you turn or move, and whichever group is behind you is constantly wearing you down.

It turns out that Andromedans, as we expected, are very vulnerable to Plasma Torpedoes, as well as drones, and we pack plenty of both.

Although, for the Andromedans big enough to have a Displacement Device, the drones work much better – they tend to use the DisDev to hop in close, so that by the time you can fire a Plasma Torpedo with effect, they can hop right next to you and mess you up good with those Tractor-Repulsors.

So we use a lot of drones for them.

Anyway, Connors has a talent for anticipating where the Andromedans will show up and having task forces already there to meet them.

Using tactics like these, Connors' groups defeated five Andromedan groups in under a week, with no losses to himself.

He says Andromedan shipping raids have suddenly dropped off to nothing & they're not to be found anywhere.

But he is planning to go hunting the Andromedans in new ways.

The LDR are suddenly very happy with our services.

As we passed beyond the edge of Federation space, the Fed fleet which has been shadowing us turned away and went home.

We're not sad to see the implicit threat go, but then again it never really looked like they intended to attack.

Anyway, as for the two Free Traders we built and which have been running trade missions out to the fed fleet, we sent them to follow, in hopes they can continue selling stuff that way. It's been a good side-business, and the Fed fleet has to go somewhere, right?

And if that doesn't pan out, then we can always sell those Free Traders like we planned to when we started building them.

But if it does work out...well, there are lots of fleets out there, full of sailors with regular pay and nothing to spend it on...

I get happy just thinking about it.

Captain's Log, Stardate Ceremony

Well, it's been a couple days and it looks as if the Tholians are going to be no threat to us, so we sent off Admiral Andrews today, with a big ceremony and lots of festivities of various kinds.

His ships are ready enough. But they will keep training, of course, while they head to Hydran space near the Lyran border, and start patrolling it.

See, the cross border incidents have increased & the Hydrans are concerned - they've been seriously beaten by Lyrans before & would rather be safe than sorry this time around.

So they hired 2nd Fleet.

Additionally, they will pay a small "peacekeeping stipend" to our base, Oz, when we get there. It's for all you'd normally expect from a fortress on the border - intimidate the enemy into not trying anything & smacking him if he does, plus piracy suppression etc.

We have no problem with that.

In fact, the Crimson Barony - the Orion Pirate clan in the area, is already hurting pretty badly - they keep trying to take our Q-ships and finding out they're not really plain freighters.

We've made a nice side business selling the ships we capture that way.

Anyway, 2nd fleet is about the same size as first – a little heavier on destroyers and heavy cruisers, a bit lighter on light cruisers, but overall about the same, except for a lot more fighters – maybe we'll need to re-balance that.

We'll see.

Here is the list:

The Condor-V Heavy Carrier/Dreadnought, the FireHawk-K, both SuperHawk-N carriers, the SparrowHawk-E PseudoFighter Tender, and both SparrowHawk-B carriers, the SkyHawk-B carrier, four SkyHawk-E Escorts (with their extra Phaser 3's swapped out for Gatlings and their Antidrone racks swapped out for drone launchers), two SkyHawk-C PF tenders, the SkyHawk-D minelayer, and four BattleHawk Frigates.

It will feel a bit empty around here with that many ships gone, but we still have a good force here.

Both Monitors are pacing the 4 tugs that are towing Oz, plus there are 14 more ships that Commodore Albrecht is getting ready to be 3rd Fleet.

And, we've got a 4th Habitation Sphere added to the group we're towing.

See, Tholian territory isn't very big, so we'll be nearing Klingon territory soon, and we're loading up on all the supplies we may need while we pass the Klingon Empire. That's so we can pass them very far out beyond their border and not need any supply shipments while we pass them.

The Klingons can be very aggressive & we don't want unprofitable fights.

Anyway, the 4th dome is a catch-all for now: some of it is for growing food, some is for storing the cargo stockpile we will build up now and go through while we pass the Klingons. Then eventually it will turn into more space for our University, uh - I mean campus, which is doing well.

Somebody said it's starting to look like a cluster of Grapes back there with the four Hab spheres we're towing.

That's not a bad idea for a name – we'll call this one the Concorde Campus, after that type of grape, and the original Campus Hab sphere will be Muscadine.

On hearing that, the folks in Thing One and Thing Two voted to be renamed Apple and Orange.

Sure, whatever.

And, with future sales in mind, the new hab has some defenses (which we're refitting into the old ones too).

See, we expect that folks who buy hab spheres like this may want to put them in places where they will need to defend themselves. And since Habitation Spheres will be stationary once emplaced (or at least most of the time), why not arm them with Phaser 4's?

So each one is getting 4 Phaser 4's, 6 drones, docking points for a cargo module and any one other pod or module, and mechanical linkages for their own flotilla of Pseudo-fighters.

We imagine they'll want to use cargo PF's to keep themselves supplied, and we'll be happy to sell them those, though we'll need to come up with a design – our license for making our own Hydran PF's doesn't include selling them to others.

Anyway, the ones we sell will also get a dozen captor mines – some with drones and some Phaser 2's.

We don't believe in going only halfway, where defenses are concerned.

And speaking of defenses and Klingons reminds me – Ever since he approached me trying to buy Oz for cheap as we were about to leave Romulan space, Rinthrak - that officer of clan Black Ledger of the Orion Pirates, has been calling me occasionally trying to sell me stuff.

Well today he called offering to sell some gadgets the Klingons invented. They're called Ubitron Interface Modules, or UIM's and they really help mid to long-range Phaser fire.

They help some other weapons too, but Phasers is what we're interested in them for.

With UIM's, our big Phaser 4's on Oz would have a nice surprise for anybody trying to optimize their range against ours like those KingEagles did. So I went ahead and bought a couple.

Pirates are so untrusting – the arrangements for how to meet and make the transfer are positively byzantine. But, for all their complexity, it does sound like a good arrangement.

Captain's Log, Stardate Revelation

Well Admiral Connors learned something groundbreaking today. He did a complicated analysis of Andromedan patterns, came up with several points of interest, and went and checked out a couple.

He went with his ships cloaked, since he didn't know what he would find. And it turned out good that he did.

What he found at one site was a small Andromedan base.

That's new to us – nobody has seen those before, as far as we can tell.

It didn't look too impressive - about the size of a destroyer, so he had a couple ships - a KingEagle and a SparrowHawk, uncloak and launch Plasma Torpedoes at it while the rest of his task force waited nearby, still cloaked.

Actually he had the 2 ships de-cloak and fire at slightly different times - he figured that if they saw one Plasma Torpedo coming in, they'd try to shoot it down, instead of shooting us. But if instead they saw 2 coming in, they'd know they were doomed and shoot our ships out of spite.

So each of our ships fired enveloping style Plasma Torpedoes - a Type R from the KingEagle and a Type S from the SparrowHawk.

See, Enveloping Torpedoes work better against Andromedans, since it fills both sets of Power Absorbers - front and back.

If you fill and overflow only one set, you don't get explosive cascades as often, since the other set can take up the released energy.

And they're already hard enough to defeat. So we use Enveloping Torpedoes when we can.

Anyway, here's where the really interesting stuff happened - after they fired but before the Torpedoes hit, they detected an Andromedan Dreadnought coming.

It was headed, at an amazing speed, straight for the base they were attacking.

Then when the Torpedoes hit and blew up the base, the incoming Dreadnought suddenly slowed to a normal speed - just a small fraction of how fast it was going before.

So clearly, the base had been enabling that fantastic speed somehow.

That explained a lot.

But of course now we had a problem - an Andromedan Dreadnought is a major force to be reckoned with.

Well, Admiral Connors was on the scene and immediately started giving orders.

The 2 ships that had killed the base launched 2 drones and 2 Scatter Pack shuttles each, then turned and ran.

They weren't hurt - well, the KingEagle had been hit when the base shot it with Tractor-Replusor beams, but the base had used its Phaser 2's trying to weaken the Torpedo as expected, so the KE only lost 12 off its front shield.

So they were not running because they were badly damaged or anything, but rather because, by themselves, they were completely outclassed by the incoming Dreadnought, so they were moving to take part in a complex dance that Admiral Connors was setting up.

Now, if you've never seen a particular cloaked ship and have no reason to suspect it's there, it's basically undetectable.

If you have seen it, then you can get an idea where it is and take potshots at it.

But if you've seen it and locked on to it, then on rare occasions, you can retain that lock-on and shoot it, though not as effectively as if it wasn't cloaked.

Anyway, since the Dreadnought had seen them, those 2 ships became the bait, even though they would be cloaked soon, the Andromedan would be able to detect roughly where they were, and could be relied upon to charge in close enough to at least try to hurt them despite the cloak.

And big Andromedan ships have Displacement Devices which let them hop around the battlefield and mess with your plans. That is, unless you are Admiral Connors, who anticipated where & when they were likely to hop & acted accordingly.

But we'll get to that in a minute.

So that Andromedan headed towards our ships as fast as he could - he knew about Plasma Torpedoes & wanted to get close and fire before we could reload.

Well he hadn't made it very far before the Scatter Pack shuttles came online & fired drones at him.

Once they did, our fleeing ships recovered the empty shuttles using tractor beams - they were still in range since the ships couldn't get going very fast yet, and since they'd had the shuttles fly at top speed in the same direction they were going.

Then our ships cloaked and dropped mines.

Both sides raced around (including our other cloaked ships, but we'll get to them soon) for a little while while those 28 drones moved to the Dreadnought.

When the drones got close enough, that Dreadnought launched one of its support ships - a Terminator Mauler.

See they carry a few destroyer-sized ships inside & can move them in & out with something like our transporters.

Well, he expected that Mauler to be able to shoot down more drones than it turned out he could.

See, he hadn't wanted to leave the Mauler behind, so he transported it out just in time so it could get ready (there's a brief delay between launching and when it can fire), then fire as much as possible, then not be too far behind to be picked up again by the Dreadnought as it passed.

Well, it shot down 2 of our drones before the rest MIRV'ed, then it and the Dreadnought together shot down 21 more drones, but that left 57 (I'm simplifying here - some were 2-space drones and 2 others got shot down before MIRV'ing), which hit the Dreadnought for 114 damage.

Impressive, right?

Not to an Andromedan dreadnought.

While that much damage would have caused most Heavy Cruisers to explode, it didn't bother this guy at all.

He can absorb 130 on his front panels, and empty the panels again before you can get off a third volley with most weapons.

Well, in this case he apparently expected that we weren't done shooting at him, so he wanted his panels empty faster than that.

So he transported out something called a Power Module.

That's an automated thing that he can carry instead of one of his escort destroyers.

The Power Module drained 60 of that energy from his panels, then started radiating it into space.

Well, the Dreadnought radiated energy too, to get rid of it, and drained some into batteries & so his front Power Absorber panels were empty, moments later, when he hit our mines. 2 Large and 3 small mines - as many as our 2 fleeing ships could drop at once, hit and did 100 points of damage, but again it didn't bother him at all - he just started radiating and draining that off while he closed in on our ships.

Now Admiral Connors has studied the Andromedans extensively, both personally, as well as all available reports from when others have encountered them.

So he knew the Dreadnought was likely to play their favorite hopping game - that's where it closes to range 25-29 of the target, transports itself forward 12 range units using its Displacement Device, launches 3 of its support ships 5 range units beyond itself using Transporters, then, once they are ready to fire (the delay before they can fire is brief), uses its 3 remaining Displacement Devices to drop them right on top of a target.

This effectively denies you a chance to fight them except at point-blank range, since most weapons are not worth even firing out around range 29, and almost nothing will hurt a big Andromedan ship out at range 17.

Now 3 destroyers may not sound like much, but each one has 2 Tractor-Replusor beams, as well as a couple Phaser 2's. Those 6 Tractor-Repulsors alone will do an average of 110 damage and as I just said, you can expect to completely destroy anything from a heavy cruiser on down with that much damage.

Now as you know, we don't like to take damage when we can avoid it, so Admiral Connors didn't want to let them choose ranges & distances, since then they could hop in and kill a ship.

So he had a plan to make them hop when & where we needed them to, and had deployed his other ships with that in mind.

So what happened was this: not long before the Andromedan Dn (that's short for Dreadnought) would do his first hop, 2 of our cloaked ships, 16 range units to his side, started launching Scatter Pack shuttles.

They launched them while staying cloaked, so the enemy never had lock-on to them.

They launched 6 in quick succession, and that Andromedan reacted as he must - he knew that that many scatter pack shuttles could kill him, and that he couldn't take them all out from that range.

He needed to be closer if he wanted to take them out.

So what did he do?

He used his Displacement Device to hop as close to them as he could, of course.

So he hopped 12 range units and blew away all 6 of our SP shuttles, though it took all his forward-firing Phaser 2's to do so.

Plus, and here's the important part, it used up his 4 Tractor-Repulsor beams as well.

He fired before the shuttles came online, so they never fired back.

We'd have liked to launch more and just finish him off, but we had to work with the ships we had on hand & that was all they could launch.

Now the 2 small ships that launched those shuttles would be no match at all for that dreadnought, so they stayed cloaked.

Even still, they'd have been in some danger, since he knew they were there and roughly where they were, so he might get some hits if he tried.

But Admiral Connors had been waiting for this moment & took the next step in his dance.

The moment the Andro (I'm tired of saying Andromedan, so will just say Andro for short, at least sometimes) fired, 6 more scatter-pack shuttles launched, from 10 range units further to his side.

There's no way he could outrun a drone, so again he had no choice but to do his best to kill them before they could fire. So now the Andro Dn launched all his support ships. That's 3 Cobra class destroyers, his Terminator Mauler and a scout that folks call by the name Courier.

Well, the moment he launched those was the same moment that Admiral Connors uncloaked his own Dreadnought (the so-called "Optimized Condor" Dreadnought, which he let his daughter name Angry, since she said the ship looks angry) and a KingEagle - the same two ships that had launched the most recent scatterpack shuttles. And both of our ships launched all of their PF's – 8 between them.

Now the time while they faded in coincided with the time that the Andro support ships needed to come fully online after they launched, so nobody could shoot us while we faded in.

Connors' timing was excellent that way.

So that Andro Dn had shot off everything he had, except 3 rear-firing Phaser 2's, but he wasn't going to turn and use those - they'd be nearly useless at that range anyway.

But he knew his support ships were still capable of a lot, so as soon as he could - as soon as they were ready, he displaced his 3 destroyers right on top of us.

Well, the moment he did, lots of things happened.

Our 2 cloaked destroyers next to him launched their PF's - 8 of them.

He fired his 3 rear-facing Phaser 2's at those, and it didn't quite knock down the front shield of one PF.

So, to clarify, here are the groups of ships in the battle right now -

Call this group 1: our King Eagle and SparowHawk that killed his base & then ran.

They had to run fast to make good bait and get the Andros into the right positions, but as a result they are far away from the battle now.

All they could add would be to launch some drones & they'd have to uncloak to do so. Still, that's what they did, in case it would help.

Then Group 2 would be the 2 Skyhawk Destroyers who launched the scatterpack shuttles which goaded the Andro into making his first hop.

They're still cloaked & that's good, because the Andromedan DN, Terminator, and Scout are all right next to them and could easily turn and shred them.

They launched 8 PF's who are not yet able to fire while they're coming online.

Those PF's are behind the Andromedans and put them in a bit of a dilemma - shoot our Dn or turn and shoot our PFs.

PF's are a lot more disposable than Destroyers or DN's. So while they are a high-threat target, they are a low-value one.

Lastly there's Group 3: our Dn TJSN Angry, a KingEagle, 8 PF's and 3 Andromedan Cobras.

TJSN Angry is actually docked to the KingEagle, which is behind it.

You'll know why in a moment.

Well the Andromedans have got to realize, by this point, that they are not going to win this fight no matter who they shoot - that they won't even live long enough to get use of their Displacement Devices again, so they can't even try to run.

And Andromedans do not surrender.

So they tried to do as much damage to us as possible.

And, as most folks would, they figured our most valuable asset was the Dn, so they shot her, planning to take her out so their side would have a better chance in the future.

So the 3 destroyers each fired 2 Tractor-repulsor beams and their Phaser 2's, while over in Group 2, the Courier pitched in with its one Tractor-Repulsor beam and 2 Phaser 2's, and the Terminator fired its Mauler for all it could too.

All told, it was 162 damage. Now that's enough to blow up most dreadnoughts, including a basic Condor Dn.

But the Optimized Condor adds some to the front shield, and we add a little more to all our ships' shields (we can't do much there, but every little bit helps).

And far more importantly, Admiral Connors is one sneaky guy.

See, he figured that they'd shoot the Dn, so he spent every bit of its prodigious energy budget on shields and shield reinforcement.

I mean every bit - he didn't budget any for moving, nor weapons, nor even fire control.

To save just a bit more power, he even let Life Support lapse briefly - you can do that very briefly - you get a little cold and the air goes just a touch stale, but as long as you turn it back on quick, you're fine.

And then here is the neat trick - docked ships can transfer power between them, so he had the KingEagle do all the same things, so he could put a truly amazing amount of power into reinforcing shields.

Then he emptied both their battery banks for even more shield reinforcement.

And between it all, he managed to absorb 153 damage without harm.

But that other 9 points got through it all and wrecked a Phaser, damaged an engine, and mostly spent itself ruining some crew spaces (living quarters, cafeterias, break rooms and such), all of which were empty because folks were working elsewhere.

Well, the rest is anticlimactic. Our Pseudo Fighters are absolutely deadly if they can survive long enough to get in close.

And they were in close.

Admiral Connors had arranged that.

Between 8 PF's, at point blank range, we average 491 damage from Gatling Phasers alone.

Their Plasma F's don't do half bad either.

That's why Admiral Connors didn't even spend any energy running the Fire Control computers on those 2 ships - he knew he didn't need to.

So one group of PF's wiped out the 3 Cobra-class destroyers, and then finished off the Terminator and Courier using Plasma Torpedoes, while the other group of PF's took down the Andromedan Dreadnought.

Those Andromedans are tough, but they have limits.

Well, there isn't another recorded instance of anyone beating an Andromedan Dreadnought without losing several ships at least. But Admiral Connors did it, and with only 6 ships to their 5.

Normally folks don't even try it without at least double the Andromedans' numbers.

So of course we promoted him to Vice-Admiral and gave him some impressive bonuses.

TJSN Angry will need a little bit of repairs, but they can handle that there – it isn't hurt enough to have to go to a Hydran base for them.

As with most Andromedan fights, there wasn't much left of any destroyed Andromedan ships.

Sometimes bits get blown clear that are worth analyzing, but nobody has made any progress understanding their technology yet from those.

Nevertheless, we did stop and pick up that power module they used to dump extra energy. Those are automatic, with no crew, so there was no resistance.

Admiral Connors says that, given what he now knows, he believes he can find and defeat more such Andromedan bases.

When Vindair heard about the fight, he pointed out that KingEagles sometimes carry a small cargo pod, just over 3/5's the size of a normal cargo pod.

He also mentioned that the Tholians have a ship called a Web Tender, which is just a Small Freighter with all its cargo space filled with power reactors.

He said it should be easy to work up a similar pod full of power reactors for our KingEagles.

In fact, when he mentioned it, his eyes lit up at the fun he could have in our machine shops making that happen, and even designing and building a 3/5ths scale Battle Pod for them.

I approved, of course, and got him the resources he'll need.

That man is worth his pay.

And better yet, he also noted how important ScatterPack shuttles are to our Andromedan strategies, and mentioned that there is a better way.

A kind of shuttle called a Heavy Transport Shuttle has 3.33 times as much cargo space as a standard shuttle, while only taking twice the hangar space.

He says it should be easy to work out how to use a HTS shuttle as a scatter pack carrying 20 drones where a standard one only carries 6.

That would be a big help, so we agreed that he'll get a couple WhizKids working on it, and also programming variable firing options for it, so it can fire all 20, or just 6, 8, or 12 drones at once, depending on how many drones we can control at a time.

He said it'd be simpler and more flexible to let it fire any multiple of 2, so we went with that.

And we contacted all ships, authorizing them to buy a Heavy Transport Shuttle each so they'll be ready to use it as a super scatter pack once we figure it out and call them again with details for making it work.

Instead of 2 regular shuttles ready at all times to be a scatter pack, they'll keep the HTS ready for that.


	12. Chapter 12

Captain's Log, Stardate Salesmen

Well today we had the meeting with the Black Ledger clan of Orion pirates to buy the Ubitron Interface Modules I mentioned before.

That went well - nobody tried to backstab us or cheat us and the goods they sold were not fake, shoddy etc.

So, what's the first thing that happens when you buy something?

The salesman tries to sell you more of whatever he can.

And apparently this clan of pirates, whose main focus is on smuggling, is very focused on buying and selling rare stuff.

I guess that shouldn't be a surprise.

And while I am not normally one for impulse buying things, I was surprised at how interesting some of their items were.

We actually arranged to buy a couple.

Remember how I noted that I want to provide Habitation spheres with their own cargo PF's, but can't use the Hydran design since our license with them doesn't go that far?

Well, the Orions have a Pseudo Fighter that's actually among the best, and apparently there is nothing they will not sell.

So we bought that design and will be making some of those, though with cosmetic alterations so it looks like a Federation ship instead of an Orion.

Folks trust the Federation and don't trust Orions, and first impressions go a long way.

So we'll make some of those for us to try out, and some more as cargo variants for Habitation spheres we sell.

Then we were surprised as could be, when they started offering us other ship designs - I mean full plans and schematics for building them from scratch!

Apparently they've been stealing designs from, well, everybody, and doing so for a long time.

Well, it's hard to forget how nice it'd have been to have more drones in that recent fight with the Andromedans. And we've wished we had more SkyHawk-E escorts, since, with our alterations, they are a very nice drone platform.

So we asked, and not only were they selling the design for the interchangeable modules that let you change a SkyHawk-A into a B, C, D, E etc, they were selling the entire plans for the SkyHawk as well.

Well, that's real tempting. Those have been good ships.

So we've arranged a conditional sale on those plans, modules and ship both - we'll give a small downpayment and get a small, random sampling from the plans.

That way we can check it over exhaustively and make sure that it's real. Then if that looks good, we'll meet again and complete the sale.

Well, they're good salesmen - when they saw what we were interested in, they threw in, for free, a small random sampling of the plans from a couple other ships we may want.

It's too little information for us to build it ourselves by any means, but is enough to give us confidence in their wares and whet our appetite.

And I can tell you it worked - the sampling they gave us for the KingEagle has me thinking about buying plans for those too.

They've been very useful ships.

And speaking of sales, the Free Traders which we sent to follow the Federation fleet and keep selling them whatever they'll buy - they've been doing well.

Though they discovered that sales almost completely dry up when the navy ships are in port.

So they have to switch what ships they follow - leave the ones that stay in port and go sell to ships that are deployed somewhere.

We'll be expanding that business too - it should even work among the other 'good guy' empires - that is, the ones that usually follow their own laws and are unlikely to just arbitrarily attack us.

We'll try with the Gorn and the Hydrans at least.

And in other news, the Starbase upgrade is proceeding well – one of the new docking wings is completed enough that we can now start building ships in it.

So we began constructing two new Tugs using the schematics we got from the Kzintis.

Tugs are ridiculously useful ships – they can do everything, and there's some things that only they can do.

Captain's Log, Stardate Excitement

It checked out - the plans the Orions want to sell us are real. So we'll be meeting soon to complete the final sales of most of it.

Though one small part is already done - they take Credit Cards!

Well, ok, not exactly.

But they were willing to accept a draft from the bank account we keep in the Federation for when we need such things.

So we used that to pay for the plans for the SkyHawk modules, which the Orions then transmitted right away.

We've checked them over and they're valid - we even started building 2 sets of E modules to turn our two SkyHawk-A's into SkyHawk-E's.

We're excited for the possibilities.

But while we were at it, we noted some imbalances in Fleet 1, which has no fighters, and Fleet 2, which has tons.

So we arranged to transfer from Fleet 2 to Fleet 1 a SuperHawk-N carrier, a SparrowHawk-B carrier, and a SkyHawk-E escort, while 3 KingEagles will transfer from Fleet 1 to Fleet 2.

That should give them each a better range of capabilities.

We also passed by the end of the Tholian Territory today - not that it's easy to tell, we've swung so wide of the border.

See, we want to be as far from Klingon Territory as possible, as we pass by that.

Well, so far so good - we haven't been attacked, or even noticed, as far as we can tell.

Trerol, our Klingon WhizKid, says it is no surprise.

He says that the Klingons like to fight and consider it a dishonor to be assigned to anything which is unlikely to ever involve combat.

So patrolling the galactic rim - the frontier next to a vast amount of emptiness, where nothing is likely to ever happen, is unpopular and doesn't get done much or well.

We hope it remains so, since we'd probably look like a lot of fun to fight.

And Trading in Area 2 is going well enough that we really could use a base there.

Well, there exists a thing called a Mobile Logistics Base, called a BLM for some reason - I guess as a tribute to bureaucratic thinking.

Anyway, it's basically two pods, a lot like the pods Tugs normally carry.

A Tug hauls them to where you want the base, connects them, turns on their positional stabilizers, and then can connect up to 4 other pods, of any type, plus 2 base modules, to make it more substantial and give it more abilities.

So if you send 3 Tugs, you can set up the base and its additional pods, then fill any fighter bays, minefields etc you need from cargo space, and attach the 2 modules as well.

That begins to sound adequately protected.

Although, the thing has Positional Stabilizers, so I expected it to use Phaser 4's. But no, the standard one comes with Phaser 2's instead.

I suspect that's just a cost-saving measure, so I'm going to have the WhizKids look into using Phaser 4's instead.

We'll also swap out the Phaser 3's it comes with for Gatling Phasers, of course.

And there isn't much difference between pods and modules, in this case, so we'll look at the possibility of just making it 6 pods instead of 4 pods and 2 modules.

It isn't like the thing needs to brace it all for acceleration, like starships do – it's immobile, once assembled.

So we started building all the pods for one of those, then realized that a base would also be useful about halfway between areas 1 and 2. We don't need one there yet, but could soon, easily. So we're building enough for two BLM setups.

And to help haul them, as well as general use, we started building another three Kzinti style tugs, so we have five of those being constructed at the same time.

Starbases have lots of dock capacity, and even though we're not there yet, we're getting closer and already enjoying the additional space.

Captain's Log, Stardate University...er, Campus that is.

We're getting a lot of folks signing up to learn how to be ship crews, so our Campus (see - I didn't say University that time) business is doing well all of a sudden.

It was just a few folks before, but what made the difference was loans.

Apparently lots of people want to get trained for a career, but haven't got the money right now to do it.

So once we figured that out, we started offering what is basically loans - they get a payment plan to pay us the cost over time, plus a small fee for our trouble.

We like the small loan fee instead of charging interest, since it's easier to understand, and folks trust it.

See, nobody trusts interest rates and such anymore - not after it has been used so often in the past to effectively enslave folks.

It's kinda odd to think of these as loans anyway - it isn't like we're handing them money that they hand us back for tuition or anything like that.

Nah.

We have the teachers, curriculum etc already.

The only expense for such a new student is a little bit for room and board while he is in training, but that's trivial.

So for effectively no additional overhead, we get a lot more students, just by letting them owe us for now and pay us back over time.

And we have ways to ensure they will pay us back.

Does that sound Ominous or have I been dealing with Orions too much?

What I meant was that we try to guarantee that our graduates will be able to pay us back.

We go about that a couple of ways.

First, if they're skilled, reliable, and interested, we can hire them ourselves.

We've been surprised at just how many take that option - apparently once they see our company culture, work conditions, and benefits, they get the idea that this is a good place to work.

They're correct, of course - that's a key to our success.

But, as with so many things, it often isn't believed until it is seen.

We even get some signing up for our navy who would not otherwise have joined, once they see how careful we are to prevent loss of life.

Anyway, those we don't hire, we put in touch with others who are hiring - one way or another, we know most of the shipping companies out there.

But, probably most importantly, we use some software that our WhizKids found for us. It was just collecting dust on a shelf, so to speak.

See, a University (a real university - accredited and everything) did a project long ago, where they developed software that makes its own decisions, in a limited way.

See, you feed it tons of loan applications - at least 50,000, plus all the information you have on how that loan turned out - whether that loan was paid faithfully, had some problems, defaulted, or whatever.

Then it develops it's own algorithms for recognizing what factors predict a successful loan or not.

It can make decisions on loans with amazing accuracy - very very few of the loans it approves have problems.

We fed ours a couple hundred thousand data sets - they had them there at the university as part of the study, so why not.

Why was this collecting dust as a completed yet non-useful study?

It seems so useful we should have had to pay a lot for it, right?

Well, it turns out there was a lawsuit in the Federation over it & it lost.

See, nobody knows what the software bases its loan decisions on or why - it could be anything in the dataset.

So the software writers could not prove that it wasn't discriminating against certain groups.

That was all the court needed to hear - they ruled the software illegal, nevermind the fact that there is no indication that it is actually discriminatory, nor the fact that, whatever it bases its decisions on must be a valid indicator for likely loan repayment, since its results are so good.

Nope.

They don't care.

It's junk to them, because it Might be "unfair". But we are not subject to their laws & it works great for us.

Now, we have no interest in being unfair - that's bad for business.

If, for example, I decided to try to hurt the Klingons by never selling to them, just because they are Klingons, then I have it backwards - I'm only hurting myself by missing a share of the market that someone else will definitely pick up.

And you know I don't want to miss any markets I can sell to.

But on the other hand if I decide not to sell in Klingon territory because the profit-loss equations just don't work out, given the frequency and ferocity with which I'd likely be attacked, then that's a perfectly valid business decision, and if I have any freedom, I can make that decision.

But nevermind - the Federation gets itself all tied in knots and extra laws over such questions. I'm just interested in doing good business.

And speaking of doing good business, one of the staff (I hire good people and listen to them - it makes a difference) pointed out that we don't have to limit ourselves to training folks how to crew ships - we have lots of trades we are good at - shipbuilding, repair work, all kinds of manufacturing and so on.

Heck, we even have a lot of accounting experts - even though we don't have all kinds of silly government reporting nonsense multiplying the paperwork, we still need to know what we have, where it is, what it cost us, what we can sell it for and where, & so on.

And on this scale, that means accountants.

So anyway, we can train folks in any or all of those trades too.

And we will.

Advertisements have already gone out.

And another staffer pointed out that, since we now give loans, it could expand our business to offer loans on ships too.

Soon we'll have greatly expanded shipbuilding capacity, when the upgrade to StarBase is done, and while we've been able to sell what ships we can build so far, offering loans will greatly expand our pool of potential customers.

So we'll be doing that too, as well as loans for Habitats (domes or spheres) we build.

So, we're a bank now too, in a way.

We may even let folks have positive balances (savings) and not just negative balances (loans) - the accountants are looking into how that might work best.

Captain's Log, Stardate High Noon

Today's news seems straight out of an old movie, of a type called a Western.

See, there's a small planet in the Kzinti Neutral Zone without even a name - folks dispute over several possible names and there's no government to settle the issue for them.

Anyway, it's very small, in that it only has one town of any size. But we do good business there since it is great for ranching large animals.

Well, the biggest rancher decided he could push folks around and do whatever he wanted.

But that stopped when he decided he could do it to us.

Now, our guys saw this coming, so the ship running cargo to that planet, at least once this started coming to a head, was Spad.

That's captained by a Gorn named Sissthriss, now that Bill Connors has moved on to be Admiral of 1st fleet.

And, as we predicted, it wasn't long before this petty tyrant of a rancher decided he could strong-arm us too.

So while we normally ship cattle out and vehicles and miscellaneous equipment in, he tried to take our shipment of vehicles and not pay us.

Then he used force to try to intimidate us. Now while he had overwhelming force against unorganized settlers and townsfolk, we are a whole different ballgame.

Spad is the ship with a Troop Transport pod, and it was loaded with eager Kzintis, Gorns, and plenty of top of the line fighting equipment for them.

The Rancher didn't survive the fighting.

His remaining supporters, we turned over to the townsfolks to judge and punish as they saw fit.

And his ranch, which we owned by right of conquest, we auctioned off in pieces.

We told the residents of the planet that they can take their time with naming, but that in the meantime, we'd just call the planet by the name of the ranch we auctioned off - the Circle K.

We've had things like that happen before - various organized crime groups would try to push us around for their profit like that.

It always comes down to force in cases like that. The key is to have more of it than your opponent, or at least to have enough so you're not worth messing with.

Captain Sissthriss posted a sign in their town, reading "try not to piss people off - you never know who may be stronger than you".

Apparently that's a translation of a Gorn saying.

And speaking of pissing folks off, The Black Ledger clan once again failed to do so.

That is, we met and finalized our second purchase from them, and the sale went well with no cheating etc.

We bought the full schematics for how to build the Romulan SkyHawk destroyer and KingEagle light cruiser, plus partial schematics for the Falcons - basically the hull and drive systems (Vindair has his own schematics for the rest of it).

While we were at it, we bought the schematics for how to make a Monitor - the Klingon one. It mounts lots of heavy weapons.

Plus the Gorn Battle Pod, which we're not really interested in building - we just wanted to see how they managed to cram 3 Plasma S launchers in such a small space.

Though we'll still have to build one or two to really understand them.

The Black Ledger, of course, are excited that they have a customer for such big ticket items.

They offered us many other ship plans, plus plans for weapons, like the Photon Torpedo, and miscellaneous items, like a number of cloaking devices, both working and non-working.

The working cloaking devices are ridiculously expensive, but the ones that don't work because they need their codes cracked are pretty cheap.

And of course, we have already cracked the codes, so those would be a good value for us.

Then again, we don't really need them - we have scores of working cloaking devices recovered from PF's we destroyed in battle.

But it is nice to know more are available if needed.

The hulls for the KingEagle and SkyHawk are small enough, we can start building them now, even before the StarBase upgrade is done, in the old, as-yet unaltered, docking wings where we've been building free traders.

So we started some, of course.

Why buy it, just to do nothing with it?

We're holding off building a new Falcon until the old one gets done, so we can see how well it works. That will be soon.

As soon as we can, we'll start building a Monitor as well.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot - one of the residents of Circle K wanted to join our WhizKids.

He is Doctor Puntchen Musk, has several degrees, and got so sick of the bureaucracy in Universities that he retired early, to go try ranching.

It turned out he didn't like ranching, and when he heard our troops talking about the WhizKids, he wanted in.

He is on his way to meet us.

Captain's Log, Stardate Base Jumper

Well Admiral Connors found and attacked another Andromedan base today.

Apparently the Andromedans haven't got an infinite supply of Dreadnoughts, since the ship they sent to defend this base was an Intruder instead.

I have mentioned that Admiral Connors is sneaky, right?

Well, he did it again.

He found the base, and brought in more ships, all cloaked, just like before.

When he got his ships in position, he uncloaked just a single SkyHawk-A destroyer, far enough out from the base to be safe from it.

While it was uncloaking, he had it launch 2 scatterpack shuttles and, once they were all ready, launch 15 drones between them, 3 of them double-space drones with, of course, double the warhead.

Before those drones even got to the Andromedan base, he'd pulled in those 2 shuttles and launched 2 more, as if ready to continue the bombardment.

Well, the Andromedan knew that could kill him easily if he didn't shoot it all down.

And it is no coincidence that he could almost but not quite do it using only what they'd seen so far.

See, Admiral Connors had studied the recordings of the previous battle & so knew how many weapons they had.

So he planned a number of drones in the bombardment that would be just threatening enough to make the Andromedan use all his weapons to shoot them down.

And it worked - they shot down 14 of the 15 drones, and one hit for 12 damage, which was not a problem for them because they can absorb 60.

But right after it hit, even though they could see the Andromedan Intruder zooming in towards them fast, Connors had a SparrowHawk-G troop transport uncloak right next to the Andromedan base, dock, and board it.

He wanted to capture it so we could find out how they do things.

Well, at the same time as the SparrowHawk uncloaked, so did the rest of Connors's ships. And as soon as they were ready, they and their scatter-packs all launched drones at the Intruder.

They launched twice as many as they expected to need, since they didn't want to have any chance that it'd get close and kill a ship or two of ours.

That Andromedan tried - he popped out the 3 destroyers he carried with him as support ships, and they all fired at our drones.

But of course, that's when Bill Connors fired off his second wave of drones - enough targeted at each ship to guarantee its destruction.

See, he'd been prepared to do that to a dreadnought, so taking out something half its size was no problem at all.

So the net result was that all 3 destroyers and the Intruder blew up, leaving only unusable fragments, and we captured that Andromedan Base.

We had to wreck its positional stabilizers to get it out of there, but we managed.

And we watched carefully, with ships ready in ambush positions, to make sure no Andromedan ships could use it to speed right up to us.

But no, apparently it has to be manned to allow that, or have its positional stabilizers on, or both.

We'd have loved to capture some of the Andromedan crew to talk to, but they didn't allow that and went out fighting instead.

While they may have tried to self-destruct the base if they got the chance, we didn't give them a chance - we took them over way too fast for that.

The base is completely intact and has full cargo holds.

Our WhizKids are falling all over themselves with eagerness to examine it, so we sent the ones we could spare ahead to meet it at the Hydran StarBase where it's going to be until our base arrives.

They'll be traveling in the SparrowHawk-G Troop Transport we finally fixed up (it had been pretty heavily damaged), since it can cloak if needed to keep them safe. It was headed out to join 1st Fleet anyway, taking with it some new SkyHawk-E modules.

Admiral Connors says that given the direction the Intruder was traveling, it should be easy to find another Andromedan base.

Captain's Log, Stardate Dirty Pool

So today I learned that corporations wage war too.

Specifically, TransCorp of the Federation, a big company that mostly does shipping, decided they wanted to take a chunk of our business from us and were willing to play dirty to get it.

I'm a fan of normal competition. But it's war when they bribe suppliers or customers to tell them what we're taking, where and when, then ship the same stuff to the same location & 'sell' it below cost to try to get folks to sign contracts with them - which, coincidentally, aren't as good as the customer thinks they are.

Once signed, the carefully worded contract allows TransCorp to do anything they like to the prices, & they are not kind about that - they make sure to recoup their losses, and more.

They're using similar tactics to apply pressure to our suppliers not to supply us anymore, and plenty of other shenanigans.

I'm not happy.

Not happy at all.

So I had my Federation lawyers look into it. They said there are plenty of indications that TransCorp is breaking Federation laws in a number of ways, but no proof.

So, after consulting around here, we decided to do this:

We made a general offer to our Accountants. Several accepted and are on their way. They liked the idea of a temporary stealth mission.

Accountants don't normally get much adventure.

See, it turns out that TransCorp is not a nice place to work & so has a lot of 'turnover' - that's a nice word for people quitting in disgust and being replaced.

So some of our best accountants are headed to go apply for jobs there.

They're still working for us & drawing full salary - so those that get hired will have 2 salaries for a while.

We expect most or all to get hired, since that's one of the things that TransCorp seems to be chronically short of.

We're hiding their job history of course, so it won't be obvious this is a counterattack.

And they can come back to us whenever they want, making it a low-risk adventure for them.

The plan is that once hired, they get to look at the company's books - that's what accountants do after all.

But we expect to find evidence there which we can use to destroy them in Federation courts.

It was also suggested that we could just buy up their stock until we own a controlling interest, then fire them all. But they aren't that kind of company - they don't issue stock.

Plus I wouldn't want to own such a festering pustule anyway - there's probably nothing they own that isn't corrupt in some way.

While waiting for that to work itself out, we're just moving more operations outside their reach.

There was another attack, but this one was far more satisfying.

An Orion BattleRaider of the Crimson Barony clan must have been having a slow day, and tried to attack one of our Large Prospecting Ships.

But our Captain Flanders was on the ball and had someone watching the Scout Sensors.

On seeing such a big ship coming, he pulled in his Prospecting Shuttles, loaded them with drones instead of Prospecting Charges & then sent them back into the asteroid field they were mining, so they'd look innocent, but be ready to shoot.

All this was before the Orion got close enough to see it.

So this BattleRaider, which is a big ship and normally has nothing to fear, approaches our Prospecting Ship and demands surrender.

We sent him the clearest message we could - a Plasma Torpedo, Type F.

Now he has a bunch of Phasers and contemptuously shot it down, expecting to then make us pay for the affront.

Well as soon as he'd used up most of his Phasers that way, our Prospecting Shuttles fired 2 drones each, and he couldn't do much about it, not having prepared a Wild Weasel.

He had enough Phasers to stop 5 of the drones, but 15 hit, doing 120 damage and leaving an expanding cloud of fragments where the Orion ship had been.

Captain Flanders is mining that cloud now. It's rich in metals and rare elements.

Hopefully our counterattack on TransCorp goes as well as that. We'll see.


	13. Chapter 13

Captain's Log, Stardate New Idea

So Doctor Puntchen Musk arrived and immediately started bubbling over about his pet project - he wants to work on "actualizing the concept" of a weapon that will "torque the target's constituent Calabi-Yau Manifolds to absorb adjacent bosons".

I have a good education, but still looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language.

He explained that it will look like disintegration.

Well, that would be neat, but we need to make money, so we work on practical things first.

I said he could work on it in his spare time, or, if he did something for us that'd make us enough money, then I'd pay for him to work on his pet project.

So maybe that was really motivational, or maybe it was just coincidence, but that same afternoon he came back with a money-making idea.

And it was a doozy.

While getting to know our setup, he learned that we use a lot of fighters for defense, but that they sit idle when they're not fighting, patrolling, or practicing to fight.

He also saw that we are doing major construction - Ships, Pods, Habitation domes & spheres & so on.

He said we can combine these things by simply taking an off-the-shelf miniature Tractor Beam commonly used on minesweeping shuttles & adding it to our fighters.

It took him less than an hour to come up with schematics for how to do so, with any fighter, and without impairing its combat abilities - though it can't use its Phaser and its Tractor Beam at the same time.

He said "Think of the Great Pyramid on Earth - it was created by workers with unpowered hand tools. Now imagine how much faster it could have been done if each worker had a construction vehicle! Now further imagine if each worker had his own flying scooter with a tractor beam able to lift, move, and hold indefinitely, the enormous stones with great precision and no effort! You can use your fighters like that! Large construction projects will proceed orders of magnitude faster!"

Well, he's right.

If every fighter is effectively a tug, crane, forklift, and giant robotic hand to help move big structural components, large hull plates, completed sub-assemblies, and miscellaneous chunks of whatever, and hold them in place while they are fastened together, it could really speed things up.

What's more, it will give the pilots lots more 'flight time' which is important in enhancing their piloting skills, and even better because some of it will be precision flying.

Even the fighters deployed to our ships will be more useful - for example by bringing in tiny asteroids that'd normally be too small to bother with – either to clean up an area for better navigation, or to bring in raw materials, or both.

Space is a lot more full of tiny bits usually not worth bothering with, than it is of big things.

Now the tractor beams on a ship are vastly more powerful than these, but we don't need the fighters to tow completed ships or ship-size asteroids.

And while the tractor beams that the base has have been used to help with construction, 6 (which is what a Battlestation has, standard) fixed beams are nowhere near as useful as several dozen mobile ones will be.

Well, we checked it over with various experts and they agreed, so I went ahead and let Dr Musk start working on his disintegration thingy, while we start modifying the fighters we have on hand & begin using this immediately.

Captain's Log, Stardate Upgrades

We're going to be doing some more upgrades - a lot more upgrades, when opportunity permits.

See, from Analysis of the SkyHawk plans, we found that the ship can handle Type G Plasma Torpedoes - they just went with Type F on the standard build to save money, and so they'd always have some Torpedoes ready.

So we'll be upgrading those to Plasma Torpedo Type G.

We also noted that the ship can support a bit more weight in back, and that not having any shuttles on some models can be a big pain.

So we'll be doing like the Tholians did with their carrier - just attach some shuttle bays externally.

It'll be a bit of a bulge on the top rear housing 4 shuttles.

We have to wait for ships to be available to do this, but it won't take long when they are.

Then a separate team of WhizKids learned a lot about structural bracing from analyzing the plans for the Gorn Battle Pod, and the pair we actually built.

That will enable us to upgrade most of our Plasma G launchers to Plasma S launchers, as well as many of our Plasma F's to Plasma G's.

We'll be doing that as ships become available too. Mostly we expect that to happen after we get Oz to its new home, since the fleets will be nearby then.

But the ships are all upgrading their scatter packs now - the final details on how to use a Heavy Transport Shuttle as a scatter Pack have come in from the WhizKIds and been transmitted out to all our ships.

And since we learned so much from those plans we got from the Orions, we arranged to buy some more.

So we'll be getting the following plans soon:

All the SparrowHawk modules - we're excited about the J type, since they have good firepower.

Federation Battle Pods and CV (Carrier) Pods, since those look very good for use with bases and monitors, at least.

The Romulan Gladiator 2 fighter, since we already have a bunch (the 12 we bought, and many more captured in the cargo bays of Romulan Ore Carriers) which we upgraded to 2G ourselves & they are working out very well.

The Hydran Stinger 2 is still best for total damage output, but they have to get close to do it while the Gladiator 2 can stay at long-ish range (Range 10) and dish out significant hurt.

There's times you want to do that.

And for the same reason, we'll get plans for the Kzinti TAAS fighter, since it carries a lot of drones and there's times when that is what you want.

The Federation have a fighter, or maybe Attack Shuttle is a better term, called the A-10. It's built tough and is festooned with weapons, but a bit slow and unmaneuverable.

They sold a version, the G-10, to the Gorns who figured out how to load a Plasma Torpedo Type F on it instead of the Photon Torpedo it often uses.

Both of those are intriguing, so we bought plans for them as well as plans for the Multi-Role Shuttle the Federation uses (Type B specifically), since it is a very interesting combination of fighter and general use shuttle.

We would also bought plans for one or both of the the excellent Federation F-14 and F-15 fighters, but they are both among the few things the Orions have not managed to obtain.

And we'll get plans for the Stasis Field Generator weapon, as well as the Photon Torpedo, since those have their uses too.

That should be more than enough new stuff to chew on for a while.

Well, that and the Falcon Heavy Carrier - it's done refitting, but we'll be running it through trials for a while and fixing anything that comes up - there are always a few problems with a new design like this.

As soon as it passes those trials, and assuming it looks like an effective and useful design in practice and not just on paper, we will start building another one.

Captain's Log, Stardate everybody's fighting

Where to start? It's been a busy day everywhere, it seems.

I guess I'll start with the simple - some of our accountants have already been hired by TransCorp. We anticipate good things there, soon.

The Lyrans surged across the Hydran border and Admiral Andrews with 2nd Fleet went to fight them, but thus far there's been no fighting.

See, he had to hurry or be too late, so he couldn't sneak up while cloaked, and they saw him coming.

The Lyrans apparently hadn't planned on him being there. So, seeing they didn't have the superiority in ships they thought they had, they withdrew a bit & everybody has been dancing around like fencers, advancing, withdrawing & changing positions trying to get some advantage before committing.

He has some ideas for trapping a few at a time, but that'll take time to set up, so there's not much to report yet.

The Hydrans are happy with us because, just by showing up, we saved a base and a planet.

They have a long history of getting beaten up by the Lyrans and Klingons.

See, while they build excellent fighters and Q-ships, and good PF's, their ships are lousy.

And I say that as a fan.

The problem is their weapons, and also their design philosophy:

The Gatling Phaser is a wonderful weapon, but very short ranged.

The Fusion beam is even shorter ranged - when you are right on top of a target, it's out ahead of competing weapons - well, some of them anyway. But further away it's almost the same as being unarmed.

As for other Phasers, they mount a lot of Phaser 2's, which are, again, short ranged. They have a few Phaser 1, but too few.

And the Hellbore...that's a weapon I very much want to like...but just can't.

It just falls short in every area.

It costs more energy, takes more arming time, does less damage, and takes more space such that they mount fewer of them - generally 1 where any other heavy weapon would be mounted in pairs.

At all ranges, it does less damage over time and per energy spent than a Phaser 2, and that's before you consider that its damage is divided over all 6 of the enemy's shields.

It's like an early prototype of a weapon - it shows great promise, but isn't really usable until they make it a lot more efficient.

Sure it has occasional special cases where it is useful, since it is an enveloping weapon, but they need a good all-around weapon.

The Hydrans would be far better off replacing them 1 for 1 with Phaser 2's. Does that sound like a "heavy" weapon to you?

So they're left with good short range weapons...and effectively nothing at mid and long ranges.

Their opponents realize that, and carry a lot of long ranged things like Disruptors, plus plenty of defense against fighters.

And while each Hydran ship carries a couple fighters, too often that ends up being too few to matter much - there are few enough the enemy can just shoot them down before they can make an impact.

So the Lyrans and Klingons are used to beating up Hydrans whenever they please, but this time the Lyrans are going slow while they figure out how our presence has changed the equation.

They are probably leaning on the Klingons to join in, but we have no way of knowing that.

In other news, our q-ship Bleriot down near the Kzinti border ran afoul of a rogue Kzinti Navy Light Carrier captain who wanted to pick a fight and give his pilots some experience while he was at it.

Now as it happens Bleriot is also captained by a Kzinti, who insists that his name is perfectly normal for a Kzin.

See, they tend to have descriptive names, like Long Tail, or Leaps Far, or Shining teeth and so on.

Of course that's the translations, to us it all sounds like cats growling and hissing.

Anyway Bleriot's captain seems sensitive about his name, and we have to be cautious not to upset him, since we don't want casualties among the crew.

So Captain Fuzzy Belly – yes that's his name, though mostly we call him Fuz and he seems to prefer that, he gets told by the CVL (That's the designation for Light Carrier) that he will now be used for target practice & if he doesn't like it, that's tough.

Well Fuz has some pretty good self-control for a Kzin and did not just blast away with all his weapons right then.

Instead he lured them in a little closer, waited for the right timing, then launched all 4 of his fighters, plus his scatter pack Heavy Transport Shuttle.

Well, the CVL had already launched all 9 of his fighters and the 2 fighter groups headed towards each-other while the CVL used its Disruptors to chip away at Bleriot's shields and launched its 6 drones at Bleriot too.

Then our HTS fired all 20 of its drones at the CVL.

They had not been expecting opposition, so didn't have a Wild Weasel ready.

So they had their fighters shoot at our drones as they passed by on the way to the carrier, then fired everything the carrier had too and managed to take out all our drones, though just barely.

The fighters stopped 9, the ships Phasers stopped 10 more, and their antidrone system took out the last one.

Now you may be wondering why a system named "Antidrone" was not more prominent.

Well, while each one is capable of taking down 3 drones from each volley, in fact it averages 1.5 hits and is variable enough that you're not even guaranteed one hit.

You can see why we always replace them with drones.

Anyway, Bleriot also shot down the drones coming at it, and it only took three quarters of its Gatling Phasers to do it.

So now it was the fighters' turn, and you'll see why I am so fond of Hydran fighters, if you haven't already.

See, those Kzinti Fighters were their standard HAAS type and each one has 2 Type 1 drones and a Phaser 3.

Well they had fired their drones at our fighters while on the way in, and because they are aware of chaff pods, they did it in 2 waves.

First 4 of their fighters had fired 2 drones each at 4 of our fighters, then once we dealt with those, the other 5 did the same.

So for the first wave each of our fighters used its chaff pod. That's basically a way to make the drones lose tracking and wander off. It's a one-use thing that confuses their sensors. It's usually about 2/3 effective, and indeed, 3 of our fighters cleared themselves that way.

But the 4th fighter had to shoot down the 2 drones coming at it. No problem – that just used up about half it's Gatling Phaser capacity.

The 2nd wave of drones coming at our fighters all had to be shot down, which took, cumulatively, 10 shots from Gatling Phasers.

So now we've fired 12 of our available 16 shots of Gatling Phasers (available for right now, they do cycle and become available again, of course), and they've fired everything.

It looked like they were planning to dogfight us (basically a competition to see who can turn and maneuver faster) because they had us outnumbered more than two to one, but I say why give the enemy any more advantage than he can take, and my captains agree.

So we just used our Fusion Beams and shot them - eight of the nine anyway. Well that fusion hit was enough to cripple each but kill only one – sometimes you get a more solid hit and do a little more damage than others.

But we also fired our 4 remaining Gatling shots and finished off 4 crippled fighters.

That left all 4 of our fighters fine, but only one of theirs fine with 3 more crippled.

Now we had a potential problem – since they had fired first (at the passing drones) their Phasers would cycle first, and if they ganged up, they could kill one of our fighters before we could fire back.

Well, not only do we try to avoid losing pilots (ok, they can eject, but that doesn't always get them clear in time), but the CVL has a lot more fighting power than our Q-ship does, so we need the fighters to help there too.

But our ship captains earn the position, and Captain Fuzzy Belly is no slacker.

He fired his Plasma Torpedo at the undamaged enemy fighter, and timed it just right so the Torpedo would be tempting and threatening – tempting to shoot, since it was at just the right range, and threatening to kill that fighter if they didn't shoot it.

Well, it's pretty reliable (though not perfect) – when faced with a decision to do thing A to avoid being immediately killed, or do thing B, most folks, most of the time, will do thing A.

In this case they shot at the Plasma Torpedo, as expected.

And then our fighters shot them down and headed for the CVL.

Now Captain Fuz fired his Plasma Torpedo again, this time at the CVL.

Of course there's no way it could cycle anywhere near that fast. But see, this time what he fired was actually the Pseudo-Plasma-Torpedo.

Now if the enemy knew we only had one Plasma Torpedo launcher, they'd have known it must have been a fake this time.

But they knew nothing about what we had – everything we used was a surprise to them. So they had to take it seriously and shoot at it.

While they were shooting, they also fired Disruptors at Bleriot, taking its front shield entirely down. And they fired drones at our fighters, making us shoot those down with 6 shots of Gatling Phaser.

But they held back their Phaser fire to shoot at that Plasma Torpedo, and also because Captain Fuz had launched another Scatter Pack shuttle.

Of course they couldn't tell it was a scatter pack, but given the situation it was a pretty good guess that it would be.

And there too, Captain Fuz was on the ball – he'd used the deck crews that normally reload fighters to load up a shuttle with drones quick. It wasn't full when it was launched, but even a partial load could help.

And it was a threat the Kzinti CVL captain took seriously, so he held back his Antidrone system to use against the drones he expected to come in - it could have shot our fighters and done a highly variable amount of damage.

Then he shot at our Plasma Torpedo with all his Phasers, not quite destroying it.

When it hit he was very upset to discover it was only a decoy.

Well our fighters got there and used their remaining 7 charges of their Fusion Beams on the CVL, plus their remaining 10 shots (until they recharged) from their Gatling Phasers.

This knocked down the CVL's shields and gutted it pretty thoroughly.

Captain Fuz docked and 'rescued the survivors' incidentally capturing the ship while he was at it.

It's a good ship design, and has the C-12 refit making it even better.

Plus we've had some inquiries as to whether we'd be willing to hire out combat ships as convoy escorts (our Q-ships do that some, but they'd like some real combat ships for it too), so we're having him tow it back here to get repaired so we can use it for that.

While we're repairing it, we'll give it that LTT (Light Tactical Transport) ability to attach and tow one pod.

With better fighters and swapping out those Phaser 3's for some Gatlings and more drones, it should be a very effective ship.

And, with a pod, it will be able to deliver cargoes while guarding convoys.

And, keeping the most complicated for last - Admiral Connors continues to amaze.

He found another Andromedan Base and set out to capture it, as well as whatever showed up to defend it.

Now this was a rare case where he had already figured out where the next Andromedan base up the chain must be, so he knew which direction any reinforcements would come from.

He used that knowledge well.

Well, as usual in such things, he scouted it first while cloaked.

Since that went fine, then he started laying strips of mines, while cloaked, at carefully calculated spots and distances from the base.

Then he moved his ships into several positions and got ready.

Then he started things off by having a SkyHawk de-cloak, with 2 scatter packs, and fire drones at the base.

Now, even if they had heard about what happened to the other bases, and we have no way of knowing if they had, what could they do?

They didn't want to die, so they called for help and shot down the incoming drones.

Then, as before, we had a SparrowHawk de-cloak next to the base, grab it with a tractor beam so it could dock, and board them.

Just like in previous attacks, their help was already on the way, moving extraordinarily fast, even before the drones hit.

And just as we'd hoped, they were coming from the right direction.

You do your calculations and make your plans, but can never be sure.

Anyway, it was an Intruder class ship coming to help this time & that was good - it would have been a lot harder to try this with a Dreadnought.

Now you can detect minefields that contain more than about a half-dozen automatic mines, and we had planned on that.

We were not sure if the Intruder could stop his accelerated movement or not, assuming the base had not yet been shut down, but either way would work for us - either he would dance to our tune, or he'd blow up when he hit the mines.

It turns out he still has full control even when moving that fast.

So, as he was hauling along very very fast, he detected our mines.

You can't detect them very far off, and the strip was too long for him to try to dodge around them.

So he had 2 choices - emergency stop, or use his Displacement Device to hop across them.

Well, he still wanted to help his base, so of course he hopped across the mines.

We had planned on that, of course, so what does he see right ahead of him when his hop is done?

Minefield 2 of course.

So he does an emergency stop, since it's that or die.

But he still wants to save his base, so he launches his 3 support ships, all destroyers, and hops them across minefield 2.

What do they see?

Minefield 3, so they have to stop as well.

Now, if we left them unmolested, they'd have no trouble clearing a path through the mines.

So at this point we had a KingEagle and 3 SkyHawks uncloak to the left of the 3 support ships, launch scatter-packs, and prepare to fire drones.

And to the left of the Intruder we had 4 frigates uncloak and do the same.

Now these ships are fairly far off, so they don't have to be concerned about being zapped by those nasty Tractor-Repulsor beams.

But far off for a beam weapon is no trouble at all for a drone.

So, we fired as soon as we could, and the enemy, once again left with no real options, shot them down, using all his Phasers to do so.

He held back his Tractor-Repulsor beams though, so he took some hits which his power absorbers had no trouble soaking up.

That was ok.

Admiral Connors had allowed for that too.

Once the Andromedans had fired, our 3 troopships - 2 SparrowHawks and a SkyHawk, de-cloaked.

They had been just to the right of the Andromedan support ships before those had turned, so now they were right behind them, where few weapons faced.

Still, each got hit by one Tractor-Repulsor beam, but our shields absorbed that ok. Then we grabbed them with tractor beams, docked, and boarded.

And simultaneously, we did the same maneuver to the Intruder, though this time it was Admiral's Connors' flagship, the Dreadnought TJSN Angry, which de-cloaked right behind the intruder, took a hit, docked and boarded.

Now, since they had fought to the last being before, we were concerned that these were among the rare few entities that'd rather die than be captured.

And that could include self-destructing their ships, which would hurt our docked ships pretty badly, for one thing.

Well, even though we don't understand their technology, we'd had a good enough look at the base we'd previously captured to get some idea of the layout, including where the bridge was.

So for this base, we made sure to capture the bridge first, as well as any areas that looked like they might have the access needed to self-destruct the ship.

That went fine for us.

Now with the ships, we had no idea of the layout, so we'd just brought ridiculously large numbers of troops - we took them so quickly that they had no time to self-destruct.

We could have done the same with their base, but we didn't want them to get the idea that the fight was hopeless, and have their ships give up and run away.

They fought to the last again, but none of them were able to self-destruct.

So our forces captured, under the excellent leadership of Admiral Connors, another Andromedan base, as well as 3 of their Cobra class destroyers and an Intruder.

Those are being towed, under guard, to the same Hydran StarBase where we put the other Andromedan Base.

We'll pick them all up when we get there, which won't be too much longer - we're about to pass the edge of Klingon Space now.

After that we can move through Hydran space, since they don't mind at all. No more skirting the borders on this trip.

The WhizKids who are already examining the other Andromedan Base are not making encouraging sounds.

Now I know that nobody has ever deciphered how to use, much less make, Andromedan equipment before. But mostly they have charred chunks that got blown free as the ship exploded.

So I'd hoped that we'd have better luck.

But apparently it's way too alien for any quick discoveries. The WhizKids are still having fun trying though.

Anyway, Admiral Connors took about half of his fleet - those that weren't towing or guarding captured ships, and hurried straight to the place where the next Andromedan Base must be.

He got there just in time to see it being towed off elsewhere by an Intruder.

They were too far off already, and moving too fast, to catch up to.

Apparently the word has gone out among the Andromedans & they are, or will be, moving their bases.

That's disappointing, though not unexpected.

Well, this makes his previous achievement look anemic, so or course we promoted Admiral Connors again to Full Admiral. He could retire a rich man with his bonus from this alone, let alone all his other bonuses.

Luckily for us he likes what he is doing and plans to keep doing it.

Captain's Log, Stardate Blindfold

Well this is interesting.

While we've passed the border between the Klingons and Hydrans, and are heading back in, we are still pretty far out past the edge of the galaxy, so that the Klingons don't see us and come attack.

And just in case they do, we have 3rd Fleet here and ready, under Commodore Albrecht. That includes a fully functional Falcon Heavy Carrier.

And by the way, when that passed its trials, we started building another.

Anyway, we've come across an interesting dust band, which we're calling the Blindfold.

Usually there's not much past the Galactic rim. That's what makes it the rim.

But, as with all things in nature, the rim isn't exactly regular - sometimes you find aberrations, as we have here.

Now the dust cloud would be unusual enough, but even more unusual is this - there is a star system, with several planets, out beyond the dust.

That star system seems to be completely hidden by the dust. It certainly isn't on any of our charts. Nor is the dust cloud itself, which is far enough out that it would be very hard to see from the Galaxy.

Well, we sent in some cloaked ships to scout that Star System, and they confirmed nobody is there.

But they did note that the system has a big cold world with a Methane atmosphere, just like the Hydrans like.

In fact a couple Hydran crew members went down and declared it a paradise.

So we named the system Shangri-La.

But wait, there's more! We also found a barren rocky world in the right temperature zone to make a good planet for us.

It has the right gravity too.

All it lacks it an atmosphere, water, and dirt.

Well, we've done that before.

So we let the fighters play with their new tractor beams and tow a couple thousand small comets to the planet.

We carefully chose comets made of the right elements, so when the dust settles (literally) the planet will have an atmosphere and water.

This should even go faster than when my GrandPaw towed huge comets to hit Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum: those impacted very hard and so it took a long time for things to settle down.

But these comets are small enough that things should settle quickly.

Now people continue to amaze me - we had several requests from among the dependents living in the Habitation spheres named Apple and Orange. They want to stay on Shangri-La 2 - that's the planet we are terraforming.

Shangri-La 4 is the methane world we will give to the Hydrans.

Now they say they may or may not want to stay permanently, but for now they want to stay long enough to watch the light show as the comets burn up passing through what atmosphere Shanri-La 2 does have.

You don't get to see that kind of thing every day...though they will.

So we set down a Habitation Dome for them, which we had already built but not delivered yet. And then, being us, we put up some defenses.

In our cargo spaces, we still had 15 planetary Defense Satellites from the Tweedles - that's what we evacuated, plus what the Romulans were bringing in.

So we deployed the standard 5, then asked ourselves why stop there? There is no reason why 5 is a magic number.

So we deployed all 15, plus a bunch of Captor mines and 4 Planetary Ground Defense Batteries - those are a small base with a big gun: a Phaser 4.

And we left 2 Prospecting ships mining the asteroid belts, so the folks in the Dome would not feel abandoned.

We'll send back some loads of the right lichens and algaes as soon as we can. That's not something we keep on hand.

In other news, we got the last set of plans we ordered from the Black Ledger clan.

We brought extra cash with us too, so we could get the plans for a Kzinti CVL (with the refits) as well.

That'll both help us fix the captured one faster, and enable us to build our own.

We're impressed enough with how good a ship it is that we started building two, with our usual modifications - Disruptors swapped out for Plasma G, Antidrone out for drone, four Phaser 3 out for Gatling Phasers, two Phaser 3 out for drone launchers, and add some Hydran style launch tubes for the fighters.

And we'll build them with that Light Tactical Transports ability to attach and tow a pod.

In fact, we're going to add that pod-towing ability to any Light Cruiser we get in for repairs.

We also started building several Federation Carrier pods, and a couple of their Battle Pods. Those both look really promising, especially for adding to bases.

And luckily, not all our WhizKids are pure science types (not by a long shot).

Those types mostly went off to study the captured Andromedan ships.

But we had plenty stay, who are generally engineer types who want to see what they can do with off the shelf components.

They are now looking over the plans we got for those other fighters - the Kzinti TAAS and the Federation A-10, with the Gorn modification of that – the G-10.

They have some ideas for improvements & so we've started building a few of each to experiment with.

We'll look at modifications during and after the build process, and maybe even try some mods during the build.

We're excited as the tugs we are building from Kzinti plans are nearing completion.

Excited, and a bit concerned – with the Lyrans pressing the Hydrans, we may need to divert our new BLM bases for a while to shore up the Hydran defensive line.

We're accelerating the work on the tugs, since well need them in case that happens.

And speaking of Hydran defenses, we finished fixing the Orion Salvage Cruiser we named Flappy, since it looks like it is flapping its wings, and we sent it off to join Fleet 2.

Since it will be fighting, we loaded its cargo bay with fighters, plus ready racks and deck crews to support them.

You can fly a shuttle out most cargo bay doors, no problem, but these doors look like they have been designed with that use in mind, so it should be even easier.

We keep sending off extra ships, so Fleet 3 is much smaller than Fleet 1 or 2, but thus far folks have been willing to hire an extra ship or two at a time, but haven't wanted to hire a whole fleet yet.

I say yet because the Hydrans have expressed interest in it a couple times. So we're negotiating. We'll see how it goes.


	14. Chapter 14

Captain's Log, Stardate What a Fuzzy Belly!

So Captain Fuzzy Belly of the Bleriot was followed.

Apparently the rogue captain of the CVL that attacked him had a brother who was also willing to go rogue in the right conditions, including the loss, for whatever reason, of his brother.

Bleriot had made it well past the edge of Kzinti Territory traveling down the Neutral zone as if it was a road, and was approaching Area 2, when the latest Kzinti rogue caught up with him.

Being a good captain, he had someone constantly watching the Scout sensors and didn't waste time when they saw something.

Even though he knew nothing more than the fact that a large ship was approaching, he figured he was better safe than sorry and acted immediately, just in case.

It was well that he did.

See, he knew that normally his best defense is that he looks just like any normal innocent freighter, but that that effect was totally lost given he was towing a heavily damaged warship.

So he quickly found a suitable asteroid & put the warship down on it where it would be hard to detect.

He also put down all his fighters, including the 2 spares he had taken out of storage and readied to launch from the captured CVL, plus a couple Scatter-Pack Shuttles, and had them all wait with the CVL, powered down so they'd be hard to detect.

Then he changed what he could about his ship – his own transponder code, his lighting scheme, insignia, and so forth.

And more importantly he changed his direction, so now he was headed on the shortest route from a Klingon base to a Lyran base.

Not that he actually went to or from either base – it just looked like that was his flight plan.

He figured the unknown ship would pass by him well before he actually entered Lyran space and he could change direction after that as seemed best.

Well about this time the unknown ship sees us and we get a good impression of what kind of ship he is.

It's a Kzinti Strike Carrier – one of their most formidable ships.

It launched 18 fighters as soon as it saw Bleriot, then called Bleriot and said: "Hello, my name is the Flesh-Ripping Slayer. You killed my brother. Prepare to die."

In the ensuing discussion Captain Fuz did his best to convince them that he was not the same one who had fought the CVL.

He spun a good story about just being a simple freighter captain and having passed another ship closer to the Klingon side of the neutral zone, which might be the ship that Slayer was after.

Well, Slayer didn't fully believe it.

But he did buy it enough to board and inspect Bleriot instead of just blasting it.

It helped that Captain Fuz encouraged that, saying that he had nothing to hide and would gladly show them in the most believable way – physical inspection.

Well, he did have something to hide, of course, but had plans for that too.

So the CVS (that's the designation for Strike Carriers) approached to dock and board, but kept its cloud of fighters near just in case.

Then Captain Fuz gave the signal to his own fighters, hiding behind that asteroid, and a couple of them made as if they were a scout patrol for a ship near the Klingon border.

They made a good show of turning tail and running, as if they had been scouting, didn't like what they saw, & were trying to get away.

Well there is no more effective way to get a predator to chase you than to run from it, and Fighter pilots are as much predator as Kzinti are.

So all 18 DAS-type fighters form the CVS took off after our fighters.

This reaction had been expected, and timing carefully staged, so that when this happened, Bleriot was in range to be able to put a tractor beam onto the CVS and dock, pretending all the while like they were just helping complete the planned maneuver.

That pretense was thin, but it only had to last a very short time before docking was completed.

Then the CVS's fate was sealed.

They carry a lot of boarding parties, and theirs are made up of fierce Kzinti like our are, but we had a lot more of them.

Anyway, their fighters, while they could have turned back, couldn't have achieved much if they had – boarding would proceed even if they blasted our freighter, and they'd much rather kill our fighters, which they raced to do.

Now the DAS fighter carries a front-mounted Disruptor and Phaser 3, plus a couple drones.

It is a nasty customer if you let it shoot you.

But there are ways to avoid that.

So first our HTS Scatter Pack fired drones at them.

Those 20 drones mirved into 60, with 3 or 4 targeted on each enemy fighter.

Well they got slightly better than average luck with their chaff pods, so enough drones lost tracking that they were able to shoot the rest down with Phasers.

Then our other scatter pack shuttle fired.

It had waited, since what each chaff pod does is make all drones aimed at that fighter lose targeting and wander off.

That's true whether it's 2, 4, 6 or whatever number of drones. So having a thicker initial barrage would not have been as effective as having a second barrage.

Not that it turned out to be effective anyway – those DAS fighters just shot down our drones with some of their own.

But all this drone action had served to fix their attention in one direction, while our fighters hid behind an asteroid, and circled around it as the DAS fighters passed by its other side.

Then our Stinger 2's jumped them suddenly from behind and started dogfighting.

Now it's actually hard to start a dogfight - fighters are normally so heavily armed that they have no trouble blowing each-other away well before they are close enough to start a turning, twisting, contest of maneuverability and piloting skill commonly called a dogfight.

So it was a tactical achievement to get that close to them and start dogfighting.

And it was well worth doing, since, while we had only 6 fighters to their 18, ours are much more maneuverable and faster than theirs.

So even though they had the advantage of numbers, it wasn't enough of an advantage.

There is nothing better in a dogfight than a Stinger 2. Sure, some are just as good, but not the DAS.

Not by a long shot.

We killed 4 and crippled another in the first few moments, to no loss of our own.

See, they have no rear-firing weapons, and mostly couldn't get in position to shoot us.

So we whittled them away bit by bit, sometimes killing, sometimes crippling, and rarely getting shot at ourselves.

In fact, I understand that Pilot Mullen is getting relentlessly teased by the others, since he is the only one that actually took any damage – not once but twice, and got narrowly missed by drones twice too (see, dogfights are the only case where those can just miss on their own without being jammed etc – the maneuvers and short time to try to lock-on are often too much for them there).

Pilots Magee and Case are pretty impressed with themselves since they got 4 kills each, while Pilots Fischer and Mullen each got 3 kills and crippled another.

Poor Pilots Jensen and McClurg each only got 2 kills and 2 damaged or crippled, making them the targets of some friendly teasing as well.

All are claiming to be aces now – not by the ancient rules of 5 kills, but by the other rules where you get points for various things.

I'm fine with that.

They'll get nice bonuses too. And we're inventing a series of medals to give out for things like this as well.

We captured the Strike Carrier, of course, and found that the captain had modified it a bit – half his laboratory space was swapped out for more fighters and shuttles.

We'll leave it like that and just make sure not to even send it out exploring unknown space by itself.

Even if we did, it should be able to get by with probe drones and the lab space it has remaining.

Captain Fuz is towing it back too, but that's pretty slow, so we diverted Flappy, the Orion Salvage cruiser that was headed to join Fleet 2, to go help him.

It was nearby and not yet committed.

Captain Slayer joined his brother with the other captured Kzinti crew locked up in the cargo holds.

We've contacted the Kzinti government and asked if they want to ransom them back.

When we get the CVS back, we'll do the usual – swap its Disruptors for Plasma Torpedoes and its Phaser 3's and Antidrone system, for some Gatling Phasers and some drones.

If we get another fleet, Captain, now Commodore, Fuzzy Belly gets to command it.

We offered to let him command the tugs and monitors that are currently around Oz and call them the Home Fleet, but he said that'd be too far away from any action and declined.

I can understand that.

In other news the first TAAS and A-10 fighters are done & the WhizKids already have some ideas we're trying.

More on that later, as it works out or doesn't.

Captain's Log, Stardate victory is imminent.

So our fight against TransCorp is going well.

Our accountants have found a wealth of incriminating evidence against them in their own books.

What's more, our guys made friends in the TransCorp accounting department, and several of them want to join us and provide evidence against TransCorp.

That sounds good to me, assuming our lie-detectors say they are ok to hire.

So we have tons of evidence, and one of the best law firms in the Federation is looking it over talking about suing them for damages to the degree that it will ruin them.

Lawsuits are already filed.

We'll see how it goes.

Normally you never want to trust a traitor, since if he has turned against one former friend, he is likely to turn against you eventually.

Now the lie detectors can help a lot with determining trustworthiness.

But in this case, the circumstances help more – the former TransCorp accountants are turning against an oppressive cruel company to the degree that they expose their law-breaking activities.

While we're neither oppressive nor cruel to our employees, what matters more in this case is the rest.

See, folks can eventually convince themselves that anything they don't like is oppressive or cruel. And life is full of things we don't like.

So we'd have no safety just from that.

But their traitorousness does not extend to any nefarious deeds – these former TransCorp employees are not sabotaging equipment, or poisoning any wells or similar things.

Rather they are limiting themselves to making illegal deeds known to the legal authorities concerned.

We're completely safe from them ever doing that to us.

Why?

Because we have no need to break any laws.

Generally, we're not subject to any but our own rules.

We live in the Neutral Zone, not within the legal boundaries of any nation, so we're only subject to their laws in a limited degree as we do business within their boundaries.

And those are not too onerous, since they want to encourage foreign trade.

So we're clean, as far as that goes.

Still, we'll be careful with them anyway, just in case.

And speaking of other people's laws, we're surprised at how many orders we get for Habs, both domes and spheres, where it turns out that the folks just want a place to live by their own rules – not subject to someone else's laws or taxes.

So, many of these are going to Neutral Zones, and some to empty space beyond the galactic rim, where no empire claims the area.

We charge for delivery, so sometimes they arrange to haul it themselves. But often enough our ships do the hauling.

It will be nice to get more tugs online to do that, since they can do it faster than regular ships can.

And the tugs will be available soon.

Not all habs are for getting out of anyone else's jurisdiction, of course.

Sometimes they want a safe place to live, on an inhospitable planet while they study it or work there, like mining for minerals for example.

And sometimes it ends up as what we call space tourism – they want a Hab in someplace visually striking, like a nebula or ringed planet, or sometimes even 'floating' in the dense atmosphere of a gas giant.

For the ones that are outside anyone's jurisdiction, we offer various contracts with different levels of protection.

These range from just selling them things like mines, defsats, pseudo-fighters and such, to an assortment of patrol plans.

The one we call the Fireman plan just commits us to come when they call, but has no patrolling other than that, and no guarantees about when we will arrive – just that we will come as fast as we can, given we may or may not be nearby when they call.

Then there's various patrol levels, where we commit to visits and flybys with specified levels of force at specified intervals, all negotiable.

And last we have some guard plans, where we will leave certain levels of force there or nearby at all times with, of course, negotiable levels of ships and proximity.

Mostly what we have patrolling so far is Q-ships - they fit it in around trading and hauling cargo.

It will be nice to have some warships to join them.

Our existing warships are mostly committed to fleets (The Hydrans are negotiating to hire Fleet 3), and fleet contracts mostly don't let us take some ships off on our own purposes, but we'll have some of our newly built ones online soon, so they can take on some patrolling and even hire out to escort convoys of freighters through dangerous areas.

There's starting to be a fair network of independent Habs out there.

Since we have long experience living on our own outside any empires, they often ask us for advice or assistance of some kind.

There is some potential there.

We're looking at the possibility of some sort of mutual defense coalition or collective negotiation agreement with them.

And our WhizKids are in for a big bonus, since they found some really effective things they can do for both the TAAS fighter, and the A-10.

For the TAAS fighter, they wanted to swap the 2 Phaser 3's for 2 Gatling Phasers.

Now while it has room for that, since both are about the same size, it hasn't got power to run 2 Gatling Phasers.

Each one takes twice the power to run that a Phaser 3 does. So with a simple swap it would only be able to continuously fire one Gatling.

The other would still be useful, since it would start any battle with its capacitor charged, giving it one set of shots.

But after that it'd sit idle.

Well, while even that would be really useful, they found a way to do a little better than that.

With their system it can recharge the 2nd Gatling with unused energy from the engines during any times it isn't going full speed, more or less in proportion to how slow it goes or how long it spends going less than top speed.

It can also recharge it by not firing the other one briefly.

So it could, for example, swing in close and blast the enemy, then open the range briefly while recharging, then swing close again.

It has options & sounds very useful.

We will build some and test them extensively.

For now, we're calling them the TAASG, and pronouncing that TAZ.

And the A-10 can do similarly, but better.

It normally mounts 2 Phaser 3's and 2 drones, plus one of 3 options – more drones, or a Photon Torpedo, or a Gatling Phaser.

Or, with the Gorn model, it skips the options for a Plasma Torpedo Type F.

The Gorns don't use drones, so the drone launch rails are idle or removed on their version. But we'll leave them there and use them.

And the neat thing is that, since one of the options is a Gatling Phaser, power to run that is already there on the fighter.

So it will be an easy swap to swap the 2 Phaser 3's for 2 Gatling Phasers, mount a Plasma Torpedo like the Gorns do, and still mount 2 drones.

We'll be building and evaluating those too, and calling it the A-10G.

Like the Kzinti DAS, they'll be heavily armed but slow and not very maneuverable.

We'll be sure to take that into account as we train pilots for them.

If they know to avoid dogfights, they should be fine. They have enough firepower to destroy opponents before dogfight range is reached.

Captain's Log, Stardate Fleet Action, sort-of

Well there's big news from Fleet 2.

They have been protecting a Hydran planet (I love Hydrans but can't pronounce their names, so I won't try), alongside some Hydran ships, from a large Lyran fleet.

There was some initial sparring and maneuvering for position while the Lyrans decided how best to attack.

Then they started making attrition raids.

They'd bring their whole fleet on a high-speed pass near the Hydran planet, and get just close enough to fire one concentrated volley at the nearest defending ship.

Now at that long range, it's hard to do much, but by concentrating the whole firepower of their fleet, they did enough to blow up a Lancer Destroyer on their first pass.

It has the bad luck to be out scouting at the time.

On the second pass the defenders had pulled in closer, but the Lyrans still managed to blow up a Hunter Frigate and leave with only superficial damage to themselves.

And if they kept it up it wouldn't be too many more passes before they had whittled down the defenders enough to feel confident in making a frontal assault.

But by the 2nd pass Admiral Andrews had figured out what they were doing and how he wanted to deal with it, and had convinced the Hydran commanders to go along.

Now we could have just sailed our fleet out to meet them and slugged it out toe to toe.

But that's what they wanted.

Not only did they outnumber us, but they also had learned what we're armed with.

And while the Plasma Torpedo is a lovely weapon, it is best as an ambush weapon.

If you can hit the enemy with it before he has a Wild Weasel ready, you can devastate him.

But if he knows it is coming and so has Wild Weasels prepared, then you end up, most of the time, playing a game of attrition to see if you can make him run out of Wild Weasels before you run out of Torpedoes.

Usually that's a close enough race that you either get no hits, or few enough to not matter.

And while you're doing that, all your heavy weapons - the Plasma Torpedoes - are busy, while his are free to pound away at your ship.

The same is true while your Torpedoes charge in the first place, or recharge after firing - he has quite a while in which he can shoot you with all his weapons, while you can only shoot back with light weapons.

And drones have a similar situation - they tend to achieve little to nothing until you can get past defending Wild Weasels.

So our ships are very much ambush predators.

If we can catch an enemy unaware, without a Wild Weasel ready, then we can devastate him - nothing does as much damage as do Plasma Torpedoes and drones.

But against a fleet that fully expects to face those, we are at a significant disadvantage.

So we had fallen back on the Hydran planet because they very much wanted us present to defend them, and to get help from its defenses.

And, counting ships and everything, there was enough defense at the planet so the Lyrans didn't choose a toe-to-toe battle yet.

Still, Admiral Andrews needed a way, without losing the planet, to get the Lyrans to split up their fleet so he could go around ambushing them.

And that got him thinking about predictability.

See, he figured they Lyrans were behaving too predictably, since we knew their previous routes had not changed much, and couldn't, given where they come from & where they escape to had not changed.

Plus we knew their speed, turn rates, and which things they must avoid, and by how far. So he figured he'd use that knowledge, and then restrict their movements even further.

He calculated out possible Lyran routes, then had all our ships and fighters tow asteroids of various sizes to block some of them.

To one particularly big asteroid he relocated a Planetary Defense Battery from the planet.

It's job was to pretend to "get excited and fire early, then go quiet" and make the enemy far more leery of the asteroids - they'd know we have one Phaser 4 there & wonder how many more we may have which haven't fired yet.

Nobody wants to suddenly find themselves facing a bunch of Phaser 4's like that, so they'd tend to avoid asteroids after seeing that at least one was armed that way.

Then he made plans for how to position the ships, fighters and PF's we had, so we could further channel the enemy's movements.

See, they know the Hydran fighters and PF's are devastating if they can get in close, so they Lyrans would want to choose a path that would keep them clear of those.

And Admiral Andrews planned plenty of deception too - both arranging the new asteroid fields to look thicker and wider than they were, and also coming up with ways to make it look like we had more fighters than we really did, such as landing half his carrier groups on the planet, so they could take off all at once while the carriers were still launching.

That way it'd look like the carriers had full fighter groups, in addition to a very large number of planet based fighters.

Of course that deception would only last until the carriers ran dry and had to stop launching, but it should last long enough to force the enemy not to choose certain paths.

And given the speed the enemy was using on these passes, once he'd chosen a path, he was stuck with it - he couldn't turn well enough to change his mind and take a different path.

Then, because he knew enemy scoutships were lurking nearby and watching what they could, he called in Sopwith Buffalo, because it was nearby but had not been seen to be a member of his fleet.

On the way, he had it pick up one "Standard Minefield", since there wasn't time for them to pick up more or special-order certain kinds of mines.

Now a Standard Minefield is over a hundred mines, and normally they get spread along evenly as a barrier.

But Mac Andrews had other plans.

He wanted to kill ships outright.

So, he had Sopwith Buffalo lay them in groups of 5, and do the whole thing from start to finish, even including approaching and leaving, while cloaked, so the enemy would have no possible way of knowing they were there.

Now each mine group had only one mine set to automatic, with the rest set to go off when the 1st one did, so they should be completely undetectable.

See, normally detection only works if there is a group of 6 or more mines, set on automatic.

So with only one we should have plenty of stealth.

Now all this work with moving asteroids and so on was just to get the enemy to run across our mines, because they'd have few enough path options that they'd end up hitting one minegroup or another.

Someone asked Admiral Andrews if we shouldn't use detectable minefields to help channel the enemy's movements, but he said no.

He didn't want the enemy even thinking of mines - if they did they may figure things out and manage to avoid them by taking risks they'd otherwise have no reason to take, such as high energy turns (which can disable your ship if you're unlucky, so you don't do it without need).

So, sure enough, the Lyran fleet came in for a 3rd pass.

When they did, we stopped building asteroid fields and formed up.

The obvious reason for us to have moved asteroids like that was to channel their movements, so we gave them an answer to the question "Why" before they even asked - we put our fleet, fighter groups, and PF's in a disposition that looked designed to make them come in and fight us.

Designed that way, but incomplete, that is.

Admiral Andrews made it look like they had arrived before our plan was complete, so they still had a couple ways to escape which were not yet sealed off.

Always let the enemy think you are stupid, incompetent, or lazy - it helps them underestimate you and make mistakes.

Anyway, they figured they could still make the pass safely, and went ahead with it.

Now Admiral Andrews had his Dreadnought leading, so it was the only ship the Lyrans could get a shot at without having to pass thru asteroids or clouds of fighters.

So they shot TJSN Lengthy, our dreadnought.

But the damage that's enough to blow up a destroyer isn't enough to even knock down the front shield of a Dreadnought using all its spare energy for shield reinforcement, as he was.

So they burned off most of Lengthy's main shield, but did nothing further as they turned away pursued by Fighters and PF's, with our ships not far behind.

Then the Lyran fleet exploded.

Well, most of it did.

See, you can fit a very large number of ships into the blast radius of a mine, and they couldn't spread out much because of how their possible routes had been restricted.

So when they hit a group of our mines, 3 Lyran Battlecruisers, 6 assorted Heavy Cruiser variants, 5 Light Cruisers, 4 Destroyers and 2 Frigates all ceased to be.

Plus their dreadnought was so severely damaged it was incapable of doing anything but drifting.

Well their remaining 4 Cruisers, 8 Destroyers and 10 Frigates all ran for home.

And with the head start and initial speed advantage they had, we were only able to catch one Cruiser which had damaged engines.

By the terms of the defense agreement, the Hydrans got to keep the Lyran Dreadnought and Cruiser, since the Hydran planet was central to the fight.

Second fleet wasted no time in taking off after the remaining Lyrans.

Admiral Andrews wanted to catch them, or at least keep them scattered and off-balance so he could take the initiative.

He is still chasing them around.

Commodore Fuz, of the Bleriot, had an idea.

He has been trading near Area 1 until the former Kzinti Strike Carrier is ready, since he is to take command of that.

Kzinti encryption isn't that great, so we should have it ready soon.

Anyway, he called up Admiral Andrews, discussed his idea, and got his agreement. Admiral Andrews is the one who will be most involved in it.

Then Fuz hurried over to fleet 1, which was near the route he wanted to take, to pick up some more boarding parties and spare fighters.

Having those on board, he took off for the part of the Neutral zone by the Klingon-Lyran border, a bit up from the LDR border with those 2.

He is driving through Lyran territory, having apparently come from Klingon Territroy, acting as a normal trader so far, including stopping at some Lyran planets to buy and sell, all to establish he is just normal safe non-threatening freighter.

I know what they intend & it's risky, but worth trying.

We'll see.

In other news, we have entered Hydran space and are proceeding rapidly towards our new home. They have one police frigate escorting us so folks don't get the idea we are invading or something.

And some of the new ships we built are coming online - including a KingEagle, the tugs, and several pods for those.


	15. Chapter 15

Captain's Log, Stardate Nova King Way

This is crazy, but my WhizKids want to go play in a Nova in our new KingEagle.

Inside a Nova!

They insist that there is a way it will work.

According to their measurements a nearby uninhabited star just inside the Klingon border is going to go Nova in a couple days.

They're excited about the opportunity that represents.

See, a bunch of things happen to be just right, at the moment, to give them the unique opportunity to study a Nova from the inside and survive it.

Most importantly, we are nearby and know it is about to happen.

But also the upgrade to Starbase involves adding a bunch of Labs.

These, like so many other subassemblies, have been built in a modular way, so they can just be slotted in, so to speak, when they are done and the space is ready.

Well, they are done, but the space isn't ready yet.

So in a way, they're available.

The WhizKids want to build a pod around them, suitable for hooking up to the new KingEagle we've been building and just finished.

That would give them as much Lab capacity as a whole fleet, without any of the redundancy they'd have in a fleet (each ship needs to be able to do the same things in case it is operating independently).

So they'd have scientific instruments available for just about every conceivable use, in lots of subtly different varieties.

Now you may be wondering how they expect to survive a nova.

Well, skipping the technical bits, there is basically a blast front that destroys absolutely everything, and behind it you just have an area of increased heat and radiation.

Now that increase is pretty large, but our shields can withstand it.

But nothing can withstand that blast front.

Nothing, that is, except for something that cannot be affected by anything - a ship stuck in a stasis field.

So, since a ship can't stick itself in Stasis, they want to take 2 ships, each with a Stasis Field Generator and line them up with one closer to the star.

When we see it explode and the blast front coming (aren't faster-than-light sensors wonderful?), the ship further from the star will put the closer one into Stasis just long enough for the blast wave to pass it.

Then the closer ship will do the same for the further ship.

So each ship will be in a stasis field when the blast front reaches and passes it, and then more or less safe on the 'inside' of the blast front, able to study things to their heart's content.

We have the ships, SFG's, and labs, available. So we're going to swap an SFG into the C8V dreadnought, as well as our new KingEagle, in place of a couple of Phaser 1's in each case.

At the same time we will complete the Lab Pod and attach it to the KingEagle, then send them both off and hope we see them again.

The WhizKids assure us that nothing can go wrong, and that this is an invaluable opportunity that nobody has done the like of before.

But this is a Nova we're talking about!

Of course things can go wrong. An inconceivable amount of energy is involved.

Still, our tests with the Stasis Field Generators have been very convincing, and these are 2 tough ships, which will be run only by volunteers, so I'm willing to take the risk.

People being what they are, we've had tons of volunteers - the WhizKids are pretty convincing about what a spectacular and unique experience it will be, and about what unparalleled bragging rights there will be.

I think the bragging rights part is the deciding factor for the majority.

We have another couple of ships ready - the Kzinti CVL, which we named Spindly, has been repaired and modified according to our usual style, with Plasma Torpedoes, Gatling Phasers, and more drones.

And one of the new Kzinti-style Tugs, named Blocky, with similar modifications - like we did with Stubby the tug is finished.

Both are on what they call "shakedown cruises" to sort out any bugs.

They won't go to the Nova since they aren't quite that ready - "shakedown cruise" means fly around a little in a safe area and see what still needs fixing.

But also, they aren't needed at the nova. Two ships are enough for that, and more would just complicate things.

In other news, our lawsuits against TransCorp have been resolved in our favor.

We got a big payout for damages, and they went out of business.

We made sure that news got around, so any other companies thinking of going to war with us know what to expect.

And our other Federation lawsuit looks like it might resolve soon.

That's the one where we could get 'recognized' as a nation, even though we haven't got any territory (that they know of - we do have Shangri-La 2 now).

Captain's Log, Stardate A Klingon, a Lyran and a Kzinti walk into a bar... Nevermind, you wouldn't get it.

So speaking of walking into a bar...

Well, let me start from the beginning.

See, Blocky our new Kzinti style tug was out cruising around, in what we thought was a safe area.

It wasn't supposed to fight anything, since it is still brand new and we haven't verified yet that everything works as it should.

But while testing its scout sensors, it saw a ship go up to an asteroid and apparently dock.

Now, since there was supposed to be nothing out there, our Captain started charging up Blocky's Plasma Torpedoes & went in to investigate.

As an aside, I will mention that Blocky's Captain is another Kzinti who is sensitive about his name.

Apparently his parents wanted to name him after his behavior as a kitten, and could not decide whether to name him "Scratches Everything" or "Sniffs Everything", so they compromised and called him "Scratch and Sniff".

He is aware that this amuses some Humans and does not like to be teased, so we tread carefully there.

Well, as Captain Scratch suspected, it was Orion pirates visiting a secret base of theirs.

Those Orions didn't much like being found, so they jammed communications and attacked Blocky, to try to take us out before we could tell anyone.

So the Orion Ship - a Battle Raider, heads straight for Blocky while 24 Kzinti TAAS fighters from their base do the same.

See, Orions don't have their own fighters - they have everybody else's.

So different groups of Orions will build and use whoever's fighters seem best to them.

Now that's a significant force, but Blocky was in close enough she couldn't run from the fighters, so she had to fight at least those.

So Captain Scratch and Sniff launched his Scatter Pack heavy shuttle, plus his own fighters - four A-10G's that were also on trial.

The Orion TAAS fighters each launched 2 drones at our guys, totaling 48.

Luckily the TAAS fighters can't launch all 4 of their Type 3 drones at once - they have to launch 2, wait & then launch the other 2.

Well, we waited a moment, to make sure subsequent timing worked out, then launched our own drones targeted at the Orion ship.

Now that's 16 from Blocky, and 20 from the scatter pack, and about the time they were about to pass the TAAS fighters, all our drones Mirved 3 for 1.

So now we had 108 drones headed for their ship.

Well the Orion fighters shot down 48 with their Phasers and another 48 with their own drones. That left 12 for the Battle Raider to shoot down, which they did, but it used up their Phasers to do so.

Well, while this was happening we had to shoot down their drones which were coming at us.

The A-10G's shot down 16 with their front Gatling Phasers, and 15 more with their rear Gatlings, then shot down 8 with their own drones.

Then Blocky took care of the last 9 with her Gatling Phasers.

Well now their TAAS fighters were close enough, so we let loose the Plasma Torpedoes.

Blocky had "shotgun" charged her 4 Plasma G, so they fired 8 Plasma F instead. And then she fired her 4 Plasma F from stasis boxes, and the 4 fighters did the same.

Well those TAAS fighters had fired everything, and couldn't fire again yet to weaken the warheads. So our 16 Plasma Torpedoes took out 16 of them completely.

And the A-10G's were right behind the Torpedoes.

They had fired Phasers at drones just before the TAAS fighters had, so the A-10G's could fire again just a touch sooner.

And that's all we needed.

They took out 5 TAAS fighters with their front Gatlings, then did a high energy turn and took out the last 3 with their rear Gatlings.

But while that was happening, The Battle Raider shot Blocky with Disruptors, almost knocking down her shield.

Then Blocky, which has those lovely Type C drone racks which fire twice as fast, fired a second wave of 16 drones at the Battle Raider.

Those all hit, since he couldn't fire back yet and had not been expecting to need a Wild Weasel.

So all of a sudden, there was nothing left - no TAAS fighters and no Battle-Raider.

Blocky went in and took the base, of course. It wasn't armed.

It turned out to be the Orion Crimson Barony clan.

We haven't seen much of them in a while – they kept trying to prey on our q-ships, but attacks have slowed to a crawl for a while now.

Judging from the stuff we found in it, it may have been their last base.

So, anyway the first the rest of us heard about this was when Blocky came back from her "shakedown cruise", draped in a large Orion pirate flag, towing an asteroid and a bunch of wreckage, and singing over an "open microphone" the following:

"16 drones in a dead-man's ship, yo ho ho, and some Romulan Rum

Torps and the fighters had done for the rest, yo ho ho, and some Romulan Rum!"

Apparently that's all the lyrics they knew, since they kept repeating it over and over.

It should be no surprise that the Orion base, which they'd towed back, had cargo holds full of Romulan Rum.

It's like Romulan Ale but more potent.

Now our guys had not been drinking on the job - they know they'd be fired if they did.

But we do profit sharing, so they were excited at the high prices the Rum would bring this far from Romulan territory.

And we have other reasons to celebrate too - the Federation court ruled on our case, and decided that we will have the status of a Nation, in their eyes - a very minor nation which doesn't have significant territory & mostly consists of ships, trade routes and workers (who get dual-citizenship), but still a nation.

So of course we immediately started negotiating treaties with them about trade.

That will simply be writing down what both sides are already doing, for the most part.

And when they heard about it, the Kzinti came back with an offer - they won't pay us to get their 2 ship crews back, but they will recognize us as a nation just like the Federation did.

And when the Hydrans heard that, they recognized us too, as did the Gorns.

So pretty much all the 'good guy' empires are negotiating treaties with us, and we expect trade to bloom, since it has been difficult to trade in some areas, like Kzinti and Gorn territory.

What the 'bad guy' nations do or do not recognize hardly matters, since they rarely keep their own laws anyway.

The 'good guys' at least follow their own laws most of the time.

And our new status should help in deals and negotiations with the independent habs too.

Those are the Habitation Sphere's, and similar, that are not in anybody's official territory, like in Neutral zones or beyond the galactic rim.

Currently they have no official standing or rights when trading or traveling in Empires like the Federation.

Sure, they tend to get treated fairly anyway, but that's largely just because the Federation are good guys.

We do have official standing and rights now, so the habs may negotiate to operate under our flag sometimes.

While we're not giving anything away for free, we'll be reasonable about it. That's most of our business - low prices and high volume.

Well, they're "low" considering the dangerous jobs we usually take on. For the normal scale on those, we're low.

And I've told our negotiators not to get too excited and thereby make deals that will commit us to liabilities we don't want.

We're doing well, but we can't carry everybody on our shoulders as far as defense, or any other way, come to think of it.

I guess that's a long way of saying the deals will be good deals for both sides, or we won't make the deals at all.

Duh.

I guess I'm just excited enough to repeat the obvious.

To celebrate, and in anticipation of more trade, we bought 4 more Q-ships and named them Sopwiths Bulldog, Grasshopper, Salamander, Wallaby.

Captain's Log, Stardate Lightshow

Well, the C8V dreadnought, and our new KingEagle got back ok from playing around in the Nova.

The KingEagle was so new it had not been named yet.

Now it is named Sunny.

Coincidentally the C8V had already been named Shiny.

We couldn't help but name the new one Sunny after the pictures and videos they brought back.

Such an amazing display of lights and colors as all that radiation slewed off our shields...wow!

Normal opertaions ground to a halt for a while while everybody watched.

We have vast amounts of all sorts of scientific data stored from the Nova, and some of our Whiz Kids have their noses deeply buried in it and will for quite some time.

And we're negotiating to sell the data to certain countries - basically the ones that have 'recognized' us as a nation.

Those are the same countries that we don't mind giving a science boost to.

The other ones...well, they tend to be dangerous, so we don't mind if they fall behind in scientific research.

One of the WhizKids had an interesting idea while out there at the Nova.

He said it'd have been nice to be able to fire off the Stasis Field Generator faster with more precise timing, so they'd have had just a little while longer to gather data.

On thinking about it, he realized that the Aegis fire control system could do that. It was mostly developed for better defense against drones and fighters where sometimes you need really fast reaction times.

See, Aegis lets you fire one weapon, watch it hit and evaluate the results to know whether you have destroyed the target or need to fire another weapon at it, then fire again and again, up to 4 times, all in the blink of an eye - before even the fastest seeking weapons have moved enough to change range categories.

He figured that that's a fast enough reaction time that, assuming he can hook it up to the SFG, a ship with an SFG could observe that a friendly ship was being fired on with beam weapons like Phasers, and put it in Stasis before the beam arrived.

Stasis, being a function of time, can 'travel' to the target in no time like that, where even a beam takes an eyeblink to arrive.

Anyway, that'd be a perfect way to take a hit without being damaged. So we're encouraging his work there.

It won't be the ultimate defense, since, after being used, a Stasis Field Generator takes a long time to cycle before it can be used again - as long as a Plasma Torpedo takes to charge.

But there are cases where it'd be extremely handy.

And talking about Stasis got some of our other WhizKids interested in another project.

Now, Stasis fields which you can project around a distant object take tons of energy and big Stasis Field Generators, but other kinds of Stasis fields are cheap and common & take very little energy to maintain.

That's the kind where you store Plasma Torpedoes ready to fire.

These are a small Stasis Generator, connected to a framework of WaveGuides & everything inside the framework stays in Stasis as long as you provide power.

Those are not only used for Plasma Torpedoes, but pretty much every heavy weapon carried by a fighter - Disruptors, Photon Torpedoes, Fusion Beams, Hellbores and so on.

In fact, pretty much every fighter out there, except for a few armed only with drones and Phasers, already has a Stasis Generator onboard, holding the charges for their heavy weapons ready for use.

See, you could never mount an actual Disruptor or similar on a fighter - they're much too big. What you do instead is set up a Disruptor on a ship so that it can charge itself up and fire, but that shot is instantly caught in a Stasis box.

That box is then loaded onto a fighter, which, when it is ready to fire, turns off the Stasis and releases the shot into a launch tube on the fighter.

That's why fighters can only fire their heavy weapons a time or two before they have to land and reload - that's as many Stasis boxes as they carry.

Well, fighters also carry an ejection system and armored lifepod for their pilots, so that hopefully they can survive if their fighter gets destroyed.

But sometimes that doesn't work.

So the idea my guys had, and will be working on, is this: They'll install a framework of WaveGuides around the cockpit, and a shunt, so the Stasis Field can either be used as it normally is, or instead can be used to put the cockpit in Stasis.

Now the generators aren't sized for keeping the whole cockpit in stasis, and can't be upscaled without a complete redesign of the fighter to make room, so they'd burn out in a short time.

But they should last long enough to protect the pilot from literally anything.

Even assuming the WaveGuides and Stasis Generator get destroyed, the Stasis field will last 2 seconds afterwards, 'coasting' on for some technical reasons I don't understand.

As a nice side bonus, they'd also protect a lot of the most valuable components of a fighter - the electronics in the cockpit.

So basically, instead of hitting the eject button and hoping that the armored lifepod can withstand whatever destroyed his fighter, a pilot would hit this button & go into Stasis for a short time - probably a few seconds, which would be plenty as far as surviving explosions goes.

Then he'd just wait until the battle is over, and set off any of several distress beacons.

The Stasis could also be triggered automatically, if massive damage is done to the fighter.

If his heavy weapons had not yet fired when their Stasis field get shunted to protecting the cockpit, they'd just fire unaimed & do nothing - there is a lot of empty space in any space battle, so the chance of hitting something with an unaimed shot would be something like one in a trillion.

The Stasis Cockpit thing sounds like a great idea, and we'll definitely be working on it as a high priority.

I asked if the idea could be extended to protecting the whole fighter from an incoming hit.

Apparently there a lot of technical reasons - a whole lot of them, why that won't work. But in short, things just can't put themselves into stasis.

But even though we can't protect whole fighters, saving the pilots is very much worth it.

And in other news the Hydrans colonized Shangri-La 4 today, and some of our folks decided they want to stay on Shangri-La 2 long-term, now that it will be getting regular trade and other traffic. They say they don't feel as cut off now that the Hydrans are in the same system.

Now since Trader Joe's, the company, owns Shangri-La 2, that was good news.

Ownership doesn't mean much if it's idle and undeveloped.

So we'll be building infrastructure for them and setting things up so they can be productive. That benefits both us and them.

See, they can buy land and housing from us and just live there.

Or they can hire on with us to develop the planet and make it more profitable to own it as well as a nice place to live and prosperous place to work, which will attract more people and continue the prosperity cycle.

Once we get the planet better set up for our workers' families, we'll offer free education to them (and as an employee benefit), so they can be more productive – they'll buy more from us if they can afford to buy more.

But, unlike past failed experiments in history with free education, to stay in ours you'll have to want to be educated, and demonstrate that you want to be there by applying yourself.

This isn't a day-care. If you act up, you're out.

Those that want to be coddled in a day-care like situation ruin the whole system for everyone & we won't tolerate it.

Do that & you're on your own – good luck digging ditches or whatever kind of job you can get.

The Hydrans paid us a nice finder's fee for Shangri-La 4.

We used it to buy 2 new Q-ships - the Sopwith Swallow and Sopwith Snapper, and to start building a couple new tugs.

See, in thinking about what vessel best serves the need for Patrol duty among the Habs, tugs were the clear answer.

They are clearly military and capable of a stand-up fight if needed, so they serve well as a deterrent for any pirates or similar that are thinking about raiding.

But they also haul a lot of cargo, which allows them to keep doing what the patrolling Q-ships are doing now - set up trade routes that match the patrol routes and get paid twice for doing the same thing.

And what's more, if some really serious situation comes up, they can attach a Battle Pod or Carrier Pod instead of a cargo pod. That greatly increases their firepower and makes most situations manageable.

All the same arguments also apply to making them good convoy escorts.

Plus they can haul things that only a tug can haul, which is another thing we can hire them out for.

Tugs just sound like a great way to go.


	16. Chapter 16

Captain's log, Stardate a whole lot of shaking goin' on

So, big news on the Lyran front: Admiral Andrews has had Second Fleet chasing Lyrans out of Hydran territory, but finally made enough progress so the Hydran navy could take up a static defense line.

This freed up half of second fleet, which went on the offensive.

Hydrans are great, but not very aggressive - they're fine with defending the original border, but Admiral Andrews says, and I agree, that you have to hit back to give them a reason to want to end the war.

So he took the fight to the Lyrans.

He had 3 groups go and scout Lyran Battlestations along their border.

They stayed cloaked the whole time and made sure to get a good look to avoid any surprises.

They also found and charted the minefields the Lyrans have around their bases.

Normally folks don't bother with minefields much – you have to maintain them and they're dangerous, but in time of war they come out of storage, so to speak.

But, since bases aren't much good if they can't get used, they do leave paths through their minefields for their own ships to use.

Well, we kept looking until we found the paths.

You have to go really slow to avoid setting off the mines, but if you do, you can do it safely.

For most ships, that isn't an option around an enemy base, since their Phaser 4's will chew you up given a little time.

But they were not shooting us since they didn't even know we were there.

Anyway, once we'd scouted them enough and were pretty confident what assets, like fighters and ships, they had in the area, we attacked.

We'll call the targets Base One, Two, and Three – three Lyran Battlestations placed consecutively along their border with the Hydrans.

At Base One Admiral Andrews uncloaked in his Condor-V dreadnought TJSN Lengthy, at range 10 from the base.

Well, as expected, the base immediately shot him with Phaser 4's and Disruptors.

But Lengthy can take that, for a little while at least, without any problem. They did 12 damage to our shields, after burning off 21 shield reinforcement.

And when they were done with that, we also uncloaked a King Eagle and a BattleHawk, and we launched all 24 fighters and 12 PF's we had.

The Lyran base had also launched PF's – 18 of them.

Well TJSN Lengthy fired Plasma Torpedoes at the base, charged "shotgun" style, so the one Type R and 2 Type S turned into 11 Type F, targeted mostly at PF's, while the King Eagle fired a shotgunned Type R, and the BattleHawk added two shotgunned type G Torpedoes.

And they all launched all the Plasma F's they had too – that's 10 more. Some of them were real, and some Decoys called Pseudo Plasma Torpedoes.

Now the Lyran PF's could have fired at the same time, but at that range they'd have done very little to our ships, so they held their Phaser fire to shoot at our Plasma Torpedoes when they got close, while planning to close in and shoot us with Disruptors.

Really they didn't have any good options – that's what good General-ing (or Admiral-ing?) is for – beating the enemy before the battle even starts, by working to limit their choices to "bad" or "worse".

So they shot our Plasma Torpedoes for all they were worth, and managed to do 372 damage to them, which dropped the total warhead strength by 186.

That means they eliminated 12 Type F Torpedoes, 3 of which turned out to be decoys, and damaged another.

PF's can dish out some real hurt like that.

Now a Battlestation can take a little under 250 damage, not counting about 40 shields, before it blows up.

And we'd sent in a total warhead strength of 240 at the base, with another 14 Plasma F targeted at PF's, each with a warhead strength of 15, at that range.

The PF's, of course, chose to try to save themselves.

And they mostly managed to do so... from that wave, though the base took major damage, as did 2 PF's.

Then we fired 4 more Type F Torpedoes from the launchers that had fired decoys before.

Those finished off the base.

Then our fighters and PF's came online and fired Plasma F's too – 36 of them: 2 for each enemy PF.

See, we had thought ahead and brought Gladiator 2G fighters, since their Plasma F Torpedoes are quite long-ranged for a fighter-based weapon.

In their last few moments, the Lyran PF's fired back at our fighters and PF's using their Disruptors.

That could have killed a few of ours, but with their base gone, we had a rare advantage – electronic warfare.

That is, normally, ECM or Electronic Counter-Measures and ECCM or Electronic Counter-Counter-Measures basically cancel each-other out.

One makes a lot of noise and the other sorts through that noise just about as well, so I don't even mention it.

Now, ECM can make a lot of noise to hinder targeting, and usually goes that route.

But it can also jam Communications.

That isn't often very useful, but it does help sometimes.

Now we couldn't spend much energy on that, since we'd already had to do the usual ECM-ECCM mix to be sure to hit the base, but we did have just a touch left over – enough to jam the communications of small ships at short range.

So their PF"s weren't able to talk to each-other and coordinate fire. That's where you destroy a few targets rather than damage several.

The Lyrans are so aggressive they rarely coordinate fire very well anyway, but not being able to talk to each-other at all made it impossible.

So instead of destroying half a dozen of our fighters or 2-3 PF's, they spattered their fire over 16 targets, damaging them all, though none severely.

They lost all their PF's, and the battle was over.

Group one then carefully threaded their way out of the minefield and went hunting Lyran ships behind the lines.

I should mention that that fight cost the Lyrans more than one Battlestation and 18 Pseudo-Fighters.

See, for a while, fighting has been going on all along the front & elsewhere, so both sides have had ships damaged.

And where do damaged ships go?

Why, to the nearest friendly base to get repaired.

And that's what we had just hit.

So at Base One they also lost a Panther-class Light Cruiser and 2 Alleycat-class Destroyers that were docked for repairs.

I didn't mention them in the fight since they never managed to come back online. Being in for repairs is like that – you just aren't ready to fight no matter how much you'd like to.

And even had they been almost ready, there was hardly any time from start to finish.

That's how we like it – fast and furious.

We like to try to arrange circumstances so we can take the enemy out fast and with little or no losses to ourselves.

Empires may be casual with the lives of their people, since there's always more where they came from.

But if we took that attitude, there certainly would not be more where they came from.

Nobody wants to be treated like that, and with us service is voluntary – there is no conscription.

How could we conscript?

We're a company & these are our employees – they can quit at any time... mostly, there is a clause in their contracts that they take a big financial hit if they try to quit during a battle.

Also they'd have to provide their own transportation out, in that case.

So we don't get many who quit that way.

And after a battle, the fear is past and the bonuses come for success.

So our folks tend to stay.

Anyway, back to the events: we hit Bases One, Two, and Three simultaneously.

At Base two we had a FireHawk-K Battlecruiser, a King Eagle, a SparrowHawk-B carrier, and a Battlehawk Frigate.

We sent that group to Base Two, since Base Two had gone with all fighters and no PF's, so its defense was a bit weaker, which was a good match, since this group had fewer fighters and PF's than our other 2 groups.

The battle went about the same as Base 1 – the FireHawk de-cloaked first, to take the hit, since its shield is thickest.

It's shield took a little more damage, since it doesn't have as much energy for reinforcement as a Dreadnought does. But it wasn't nearly enough damage to penetrate the shield.

This time our Plasma bombardment did 300 to the base, which was sill plenty, and we had no trouble shooting down their Klingon Z-Y fighters with our remaining Plasma F's, though again, we had to wait for our fighters to finish them off.

See, Lyrans never built fighters of their own – they buy them from the Klingons.

Now the Z-Y is a good fighter at dogfighting and slinging drones, but we had plenty of firepower to shoot down all their drones, and then the fighters themselves.

We didn't even take any damage at Base Two.

The Lyrans also lost 2 Leopard-class destroyers and a Jaguar-class cruiser there.

They were docked for repairs just like at Base One.

I'm not saying it is a mistake to dock for repairs – you have to. But it was a mistake for them to be unprepared for surprise attack when they should have known we had ships with the ability to cloak.

It was a mistake for them to send all their ships off to the fight and assume the bases behind them would be secure.

Base Three was much the same.

There they had 12 PF's and 6 fighters, while we had a SuperHawk-N heavy carrier, King Eagle, and a SkyHawk-B carrier.

In this fight our Plasma Volley at the base was weaker – only 180 total points, but we had 20 fighters and 10 PF's throwing Plasma Torpedoes, which was enough to make up the lack. Those launched their Plasma F's to finish off the base and the enemy fighters, plus damage 5 enemy PFs.

e had to finish off their PF's with drones launched from our ships and Scatter Pack shuttles we launched.

Our fighters and PF's took some damage, as at Base One, but we won here too.

And the Lyrans lost a Tiger-class Cruiser and two Cheetah-class Frigates who were docked for repairs.

Al three of our groups then went hunting Lyran ships in their rear areas, but they did it while converging on a Lyran StarBase.

See, most empires, including the Lyrans, have a line of Battlestations as their first line of border defense, and a thinner line of StarBases behind the first.

Remember how Commodore Fuz went in his Q-ship Bleriot, trading through Lyran Territory?

He went in through the Klingon border to disassociate himself from the fighting, and otherwise did all he could to appear as a normal, non-threatening, unremarkable freighter full of weapons, troops, and fighters.

Well, strike that last bit – he was full of weapons, troops, and fighters, but was careful to make sure the Lyrans never knew that.

He still carried enough actual cargo to do real trading, though he probably appeared picky about his deals and the prices he would accept - he used those as excuses to trade less volume of goods, since he didn't have nearly as much cargo as it appeared he did.

Troops and fighters etc take up space.

Anyway, he pulled it off. He traded from place to place until he got to a certain StarBase – yes, the same one that Admiral Andrews' ships converged on after taking out the Battlestations.

Though they weren't converging yet – this was carefully timed and coordinated, so while Commodore Fuzzy Belly was approaching the Starbase, everything was still quiet on the front.

Well, he docked and boarded and you know what happened.

Even though StarBases have quite a few boarding parties, the number is known fairly well, and Fuzzy Belly went in knowing what his target was and he planned accordingly.

He had several temporary barracks' set up in his cargo areas – enough to take the base with plenty of safety margin just in case.

And he also accounted for the extra boarding parties they would have from any ships they had docked to them.

He took a LOT of boarding parties.

Now we had had concerns that the fighters and PF's based at that StarBase may take off and blow up the base out of spite.

But no, they knew they were boarded, but had no idea how that fight was going to go.

So since they had no targets to blow up in their fighters and PF's, they, being highly aggressive Lyrans, joined in the fighting in the corridors of the base.

By the time they could tell they were going to lose, it was too late to launch.

Well, the moment he took the base, Commodore Fuz signaled for the tug we had pre-positioned and waiting.

It wasn't one of our tugs – they are busy and not close enough yet.

So this Tug was on loan from the Hydran Navy, and it now bears the honor of being the Hydran Navy ship that has penetrated furthest of any into Lyran territory.

I said the Hydrans weren't very aggressive, didn't I?

Anyway, while Fuzzy Belly waited for his ride – the tug, to arrive, he carefully swept a path through the base's mines, to give the Tug a nice clear path straight back to Hydran lines.

He also broke out the fighters he had brought tucked away in cargo space and got them ready to launch and defend them if necessary.

But it turned out not to be necessary, mostly – Admiral Andrews had raided back and forth, hitting here and then there, so that what Lyran ships would have been available to go fight at that StarBase, were instead scattered around with only one near enough to the StarBase to get there before Admiral Andrews did.

Though speaking of Lyran ships, I should mention that this base also had some ships in for repairs, plus some under construction.

Now while the Battlestations right along the front had had their repair bays full, this base, being further from the front did not. Though, it still had a few, mosty big ships, since its repair bays were far more extensive than the others.

Under repairs at this StarBase were a Cougar class Tug, a Yaguarundi class Light Carrier, 2 Wildcat class Battlecruisers, and a Saber-Tooth Tiger class Mauler.

They were building a lot of Pseudo Fighters, plus some Alleycat class destroyers and Jaguar-class cruisers, including the leader and light carrier variants.

And here's the fun part - they, of necessity, had plans all over the place for the things they were building, so we captured those too.

And they never expected a StarBase to be captured, so the ships are unlocked, as are many of their documents.

We can use the captured ships as soon as we can repair and crew them.

We also expect we can sell a lot of the documents to the Hydrans, and even the StarBase itself.

We started negotiations on those right away, of course.

So anyway, of the many Lyran ships that responded to their StarBase's distress call, only one, a Tiger class Heavy Cruiser, got there before our own ships did.

Well, when it approached, we launched fighters and our Heavy Transport Shuttle loaded as a scatter pack shuttle.

We couldn't launch Bleriot, since we hadn't yet figured out how to open the docking bay doors.

We'd brought Lyran language translators, but it still took a while to figure out their controls.

Anyway, as soon as we were able, and well before that Tiger was within effective Disruptor range, we fired drones.

Now normally Lyrans like to think of themselves as being immune to drones, since they have a weapon called an Expanding Sphere Generator, or ESG.

That does what it sounds like it does - makes a hollow shell around the ship that generates it. Anything touching the shell takes damage.

They can make the radius on it as large as range 3, which generally means that Hydran Fighters are going to die if they try to get close enough to use their own weapons.

But, while Bleriot had 6 Hydran Stinger 2's of its own (2 of those are normally stored as spares), the extras we brought along were not Hydran.

At the beginning of this little venture, when Captain Fuzzy Belly stopped by First Fleet to get more boarding parties and fighters, all they had to spare was one squadron of the new experimental TAASG fighters (Or TAZ for short).

Those can launch 4 of the bigger Type 3 drones, 2 at a time, and 2 smaller Type 1S antifighter drones also called dogfight drones.

So, what we had was a practical demonstration of the limits of an ESG - they can only hold so much energy, and they deal it out evenly to all targets.

In this case, that meant that the Tiger's ESG's could destroy 10 drones. But if you fired 15, then none of them would be destroyed, though all would be damaged: 10 would have 3 points of the 4 it takes to destroy them, and 5 would have 2 damage points, but all would still be funny functional.

Neat trick, huh?

Of course it isn't that easy - all the Lyrans have to do is use Phasers to shoot down 5 of those 15 drones, then the ESG can kill the rest.

Well, in this case, the Lyrans actually shot down 13 with Phasers, and grabbed another 4 in tractor beams.

Their ESG's could have killed 10 more if we'd fired fewer drones, but we overwhelmed them, by firing 20 from the HTS and 24 more from the fighters, so the ESG's effectively did nothing.

That left 27 drones to hit the Lyran Heavy Cruiser, which was almost enough to blow it up three times over - it exploded spectacularly.

One fighter took 6 damage from Disruptor fire, but that's simple to repair.

Well, shortly after that, Admiral Andrews arrived with the ships he'd used to attack the bases, as well as the Hydran Tug.

They didn't dawdle, but got the StarBase moving as soon as that Tug arrived.

Some of Admiral Andrews' ships escorted the StarBase, while others ranged around nearby, looking to ambush any Lyrans that showed up.

And they did show up - a steady stream of them, mostly frigates and destroyers, coming from all directions.

Some came from other bases, or from escorting convoys in rear areas, or from where they'd been patrolling.

In fact pretty much anything you might have a ship do, they had some doing, more or less nearby, and most of those hurried to get to the StarBase, with some arriving early & some later.

The only place they didn't come from was the Hydran Border, where we had started a general attack. The ships there had to stay and respond to that.

So we had Lyran ships, individually, and in small groups approaching the StarBase from all directions.

I mentioned that Plasma Torpedoes, and to a lesser extent, Drones, are ambush weapons, right?

And the Romulan cloaking device, which we have on all our TJSN ships, really helps with ambushes, right?

Well it turns out that Admiral Andrews can do amazing things with cloaking ships – like spot an enemy, plot their course carefully, get ahead of them, then lay a few mines so the engagement opens with them blowing up.

Or fly near &, while cloaked, launch fighters & PF's at carefully selected ranges so that the enemy can't fire effectively during the time while you can't respond, but you can close in a little (fighters are good at that) and overwhelm them with Plasma Torpedoes.

Or fly near & charge up Plasmas, then uncloak at about range 10, where Plasmas are effective and most other weapons don't do much in just one volley, & so turn them inside out without warning.

He did variations on these themes for quite a while, as we got ever closer to the border and relative safety.

Now Lyrans are neither used to Plasma Torpedoes, nor cloaked ships. So our first attacks with Plasma sure confused and abused 'em.

And folks who live near Romulans realize there could always be a cloaked ship nearby laying mines for you, since it if a very effective tactic, so they fly in a semi-random zigzag pattern, just in case.

It gets to be a habit with them.

But the Lyrans never had to do that before. They're not used to doing it, so we caught quite a few with mines.

They'll get used to it if the Hydrans hire our fleets permanently, like they are talking about doing. But for now, they are easy enough to catch that way.

Now, they tried several ways to attack us, none of which worked because we had overall numerical advantage so far, so we were able to take them on if they grouped up, or chase small groups if they scattered.

Now that takes an aggressive and skilled Admiral to keep that up, but we had one.

So, for most of the trip to the border, we were able to pick our fights and take on small groups where we had local superiority.

And, as you know, we go for sudden overwhelming force when we can.

So they lost several ships - a battlecruiser, 5 cruisers, 17 destroyers, and 13 frigates in all.

But of course, no tactic is perfect.

They knew we were headed to the border, so they were able to gather a force far enough away from us so we couldn't detect it or attack it. And, having finally gathered such a force and brought it near the border, what did they do with it?

Well, after losing several ships to tactics involving mines and ambushes, the Lyrans tried to use our own game against us - they laid a minefield well ahead of us on our path.

But we have that habit of zigzagging, so they had to lay a big minefield to make sure to catch us. And a big minefield is easy to detect - not where the individual mines are - that takes a lot more effort.

But it is easy, so easy that it is effectively automatic, to detect that a minefield is close & what direction it's in.

Now any minefield can be breached - you just have to go very very slowly & clear them one at a time.

So when you lay a minefield, it's purpose really isn't to actually blow anything up, but to make it stop and go slow so it can avoid blowing up. Then while it is going slow, you have them where you want them for an ambush.

So we're sailing along, thinking the journey is almost over, when we detect their minefield and stop.

They knew the moment we did so, since they had had scouts watching us.

Of course, they watched briefly then ran, to be replaced by other scouts elsewhere on our perimeter.

They learned to do that when they lost the first few scouts.

But anyway, since they knew when we stopped, they chose that moment to hurry in for a multi-pronged coordinated attack.

They had gathered a fairly big fleet for it too.

Now normally a minefield is a wonderful barrier - you don't have any choice but go very very slowly, scanning it and clearing a mine at a time, or go quick and let them hit you, while hoping the minefield is thin enough that it won't kill you (though in my opinion, anyone who would lay one so thin it that just damages targets is doing it wrong & shouldn't be in charge of making that kind of decision).

Anyway, Admiral Andrews is an inspired soul, and had a great idea, for which we gave him a medal later.

It is said that a famous explorer back on old Earth, after a major discovery he'd made, was at a dinner with folks who were saying the discovery was nothing special – that anyone could have done it.

He asked if any of them could stand an egg on its end.

Now if you have never seen or heard of an egg, I'll just mention the part that's important here, which is that it is irregularly round and cannot be balanced on its end.

Anyway, the other diners all tried to balance these eggs and all failed, and then, the story goes, the explorer thumped his egg hard down onto the table, crumpling it's end flat, yet achieving his challenge – it stood on its end.

The point of this was that he powerfully demonstrated that, with the egg just as with his major discovery, it is easy only once you have had the idea.

Similarly Admiral Connors' idea is revolutionary, and should have occurred to everybody, but didn't.

It will change minefields everywhere.

It is obvious, once you've thought of it.

Now mines have fairly simple targeting mechanisms.

While they can do some tricks like let the first target pass and explode on the second target, for the most part they are limited to determining a ships size.

They are mostly set to attack size class 2-4 ships.

Now Size class 2 just means dreadnoughts, while size class 3 is cruisers and size class 4 is destroyers and frigates.

Between them that's pretty much everything bigger than a PF and smaller than a base.

A Wild Weasel shuttle imitates the ship that launched it, and does so well enough to fool seeking weapons like drones and Plasma Torpedoes.

There are many factors it imitates to get the whole picture right, one of the most basic of which, is the ships size.

As far as I know, Wild Weasels haven't been used to fool mines before this. But they worked great.

So Admiral Andrews had some of his ships launch Wild Weasel shuttles to clear a path thru the mines.

The Dreadnought's shuttle went first, then one from a cruiser, then one from a frigate, to cover all likely size classes, and all spaced apart so they wouldn't lose 2 to one explosion.

Whenever they lost one, they launched another.

The process used up 5 Wild Weasels as they encountered and detonated mines, but they made a clear lane all the way through the minefield.

Just in case, they made extra sure, and sent a couple Wild Weasels well out ahead to be certain there were no surprise clusters of mines beyond the end of the minefield.

They also used tractor beams to recover some Wild Weasel shuttles which had not been blown up.

As the fleet started through the gap, they laid some of our own mines to make it hard for any ships following them through the gap, and also broke out spare shuttles to replace those which had been destroyed.

And they started loading up Scatter Pack shuttles to use against the enemy forces which they could see coming.

Now, even though we weren't stopped by the minefield, the enemy still launched their attack, and it was a doozy.

They came in 5 groups.

Group 1 came in from the front and was 84 Klingon Z-Y fighters - those are the best the Klingons or Lyrans have.

From behind came Group 2 - another 144 Z-Y fighters.

From our left came group 3 - 120 Lyran Bobcat PseudoFighters.

And group 4 came from our right with another 108 Lyran PF's.

All four of those groups were well-timed to arrive simultaneously. But our surprise way of defeating the minefield had left group 5 - their fleet of almost 30 ships, a bit behind.

One thing we learned from their movements was that the minefield was set to ignore fighters and PF's.

Admiral Connors used that knowledge as he deployed our forces to defend our group, as it still fled towards the border.

Against all that, we had 12 ships, 41 PF's, and 85 fighters.

We'd have liked to use the ships and 24 Z-Y fighters we captured in the StarBase, but for the ships we didn't have crews trained, plus they were still damaged.

And the fighters, having been manufactured by Klingons, had more of a security focus and they had interlocks set whenever not in use, so we'd have to break the encryption on them before we could use those.

So the only use we got out of the StarBase was its shuttles, and as a platform to launch Bleriot's fighters and the extra fighters we'd brought for it, while Bleriot launched extra shuttles instead of fighters.

Well, I don't know how he juggled figures and probabilities in his head that quick, but Admiral Andrews had our stuff deployed in time, with groups set to fight each of the enemy groups.

Against group 4 - the 108 Lyran PF's, he matched our Scatter Pack Shuttles, the 12 TAASG fighters we had, and the drone launchers on our ships.

Group 3, the 120 PF's, were faced by our 41 PF's.

Group 2 - their 144 fighters, faced 73 of our fighters, while group 1 of 84 enemy fighters would be dealt with by our ships' Plasma Torpedo launchers.

Our ships Phasers were held back for defense.

So it played out like this:

While group 4 were still a fair distance away - well outside their own range, all our scatter-packs launched drones, as did our ships drone launchers and the 12 TAASG fighters.

The ships mounted only 25 drone launchers, and the fighters could fire 24 at a time, and do it 3 times before they ran dry.

So our main effort here was all our scatter pack shuttles.

Now this was every shuttle in the fleet (minus just a couple held back as Wild Weasels just in case): 11 Heavy Transport Shuttles, and 28 regular shuttles, which fired 388 drones between them.

Now every one of our drones was a Multi-Warhead drone, so when they MIRV'ed, they turned into 1311 small "dogfight" drones.

The Lyran PF's shot them with front Phasers, then spun and shot them again with rear Phasers, and so managed to shoot down 648 of them. But the other 663 drones hit and took out 83 PF's.

Then our rapid fire drone racks on the ships fired again, and those drones hit before the PF's could shoot any down.

That knocked down another 9.

Well, they kept coming in, so our fighters and ships fired again, while we were frantically landing our empty scatter packs so we could reload them.

This time only 49 drones went out, and MIRV'ed into 147.

Their 16 remaining PF's shot down 96 of them, and lost 6 more PF's to the remaining drones.

Then our rapid fire drone racks fired their last shots and ran dry.

That was another 75 little drones hitting the PF's which took out 9 of the last 10 PF's and damaged the last one, including his engine.

He ran, but we chased him down later - we weren't going to let him fight again another day.

He surrendered when we caught up with him.

While that was happening, our 41 PF's were facing 120 of theirs.

We charged in, launched Plasma Torpedoes, Type F, at range 10, which is basically the maximum effective range for those, then spun around and ran.

Well, the enemy, figuring they may not get a better chance, fired their Disruptors at us, mangling the rear shields of most of our PF's but not penetrating any.

Having fooled them into using up their heavy weapons for now, at a range where they weren't very effective, we spun again and headed right back in to launch another full set of Type F Torpedoes at range 5, where they do more damage and we could follow up quickly with Gatling Phasers.

Now the first set of Torpedoes had been shot down entirely, but they used up all but 9 of their Phaser 1's to do it.

So for our second volley of Plasma Torpedoes, they fired the remaining Phaser 1's and then spun and fired rear-facing Phaser 3's.

Now that weakened our warhead strengths such that we only breached the shields and did a couple internal damage to those 41 targets.

But it also used up their Phasers, which freed our PF's to close in to pointblank range and fire Gatling Phasers.

While we were doing that, the TAASG fighters fired their last 24 dogfight drones at the damaged PF's.

It's too bad they only carry 4 full-sized drones & 2 small ones, but in this fight we were glad to even have the small ones. Those hit and did a little more damage each.

Then our PF's fired their Gatlings & the fight suddenly looked very different.

See, each of our Harrier class PF's, which is what we had here, mounts 4 Gatling Phasers.

At point-blank range, it only takes 2 of those to completely take down a PF.

So our 41 PF's took out their 79 undamaged PF's, and beat up several of the damaged ones some more.

At this point each of the surviving Lyran PF's was about half dead.

Then we clung tight to their tails while everybody's weapons recharged.

That was worth a try, but they were still able to do High Energy Turns to face us again and fire what they had left.

So they blasted our front shields with Disruptor fire and Phaser 1's - everything they had left which could point at us, then they evaporated under our Gatling Phaser fire.

Luckily they did not coordinate their fire to take some of us out - I mentioned that the Lyrans are bad at that - they get focused on an opponent & seem to think of it as a duel of honor or something.

So our PF's lost most of their front shields, but that was it.

It would have been a lot worse if the enemy PF's had not already been half dead. But among the systems that they'd lost were about half of their weapons, so none of our PF's got seriously damaged.

All of our PF's had taken significant damage to 2 shields, but they'd taken out almost 3 times their number.

And at the same time, group 2 caught up to our fighters.

While they were still outside the range of our Plasma Torpedoes, their 144 fighters fired 288 drones at our ships, more or less evenly distributed among the targets, and another 288 dogfight drones at our fighters.

Well, with spinning to bring all weapons to bear, and largely thanks to the many Gatling Phasers we mount, our ships managed to shoot down 190 of the drones coming at them.

Our TAASG fighters shot down another 48 then spun and shot down 48 more with their rear-facing Gatlings.

The last 2 drones in that group got shot down by Fusion beams from Bleriot.

As for the drones coming at our fighters, we shot them all down with 4 Gatling shots left to spare.

Well, both fighter groups closed on each-other, and at range 3, our 60 Gladiator 2G fighters launched a Plasma Torpedo each.

The Lyran fighters tried to shoot them down, and coordinated their fire, which they don't always do.

This was coordination basically along the lines of each one shooting the Torpedo nearest him.

And after they were done, 24 of their fighters were crippled and 36 killed by our Torpedoes, instead of the 60 kills it would have been without their defensive fire.

Well, we charged in and let loose with our Gatling Phasers at range 1, killing 73 of them, then closed in to knife-fighting range, so to speak, and started dogfighting with them.

Now the Z-Y is a great dogfighter - tied for best with the Kzinti TAAS, the Federation F-14 and F-15, and, of course, the Hydran Stinger 2, so you don't dogfight with them unless you really need to, but the 13 Stinger 2's we had can stand up one for one versus Z-Y's any day.

Plus they only had 11 uncrippled fighters, and we had 13 Stinger-2's, including the 6 Ace Pilots from Bleriot.

Not only that, but we also had plenty of Gladiator-2G fighters to gang up on those Z-Y's.

And while the Gladiator-2G is only a mediocre dogfighter, ganging up makes up much of the difference.

So our Aces took out their targets quick & switched to secondary targets, then switched to crippled targets after that, all while our other fighters were chipping away at enemy numbers across the board.

Our other Stinger 2's did well too, but even with help, they didn't take out their targets as fast as the Ace pilots did.

The Gladiator-2G's are slightly less capable in a dogfight than crippled Z-Y fighters are, but with ganging up on them, they were holding their own mostly - long enough at least for Stinger-2's to finish up their own targets and come rescue them.

We had a few Gladiator 2-G's get damaged, but didn't lose any.

Nor did we lose any Stinger-2's as we finished off the enemy fighter group.

I don't mean to say that Gladiator-2G fighters are useless in a dogfight - they are solidly in the middle of the pack. It's just that Z-Y's and Stingers are that good by comparison.

And simultaneous with all of that, our ships had to deal with 84 incoming Z-Y fighters.

Well, those fighters were sneaky and held their drone fire long enough so that we couldn't catch both these, and the previous group of 288 drones, with the same set of Wild Weasels - we'd have had to use 2 sets, and they knew we didn't have enough shuttles left for that.

So we had shot down the first set to preserve our Wild Weasel capacity, and because the timing would have been bad to use WW for that group anyway.

See, while you have a Wild Weasel out, you have to be careful not to 'void' it, which basically means don't fire weapons or move fast.

If you do, then the seeking weapons figure out that the Wild Weasel isn't you, and target you again instead of it.

Well, things change fast in a battle like this, and often what would have been a bad idea a moment ago is a great idea right now.

So while it would have been a bad idea to cloak or use Wild Weasels to stop the first group of 288 drones, by this time it was a good idea.

So when these 84 fighters fired 168 big drones, plus 168 more dogfight drones, at our ships, we were able to either cloak, or use Wild Weasels to stop them.

See, if you have enough time to complete fading out, then cloaking is a great defense against drones - they lose lock-on and wander off harmlessly.

Of course, then you are helpless until you de-cloak, and helpless while you fade in and they shoot you.

So you don't want to do that in most cases.

In this case, some of our ships had to cloak, since they didn't have enough shuttles to still have a Wild Weasel ready after launching all those scatter pack shuttles.

But first they did what they could, considering they'd already fired all their Phasers.

They each dropped one of their shields - one that wasn't facing an enemy who could shoot at it.

You have to drop a shield before using transporters, since transporters can't go through shields.

So they quickly transported crews aboard some of our shuttles that had been used as scatter packs and were still waiting to land and re-arm (landing takes a long time - each shuttle has to wait its turn for the landing bay doors).

See, scatter packs are high priority targets for the enemy: if they know what they are and are close enough to shoot them, they will.

So scatter packs are usually launched without a crew & either fly a simple program, or are remote-controlled from the ship.

But either way, without a crew, they can't use their Phaser 3's.

So we gave some of them crews, then cloaked.

Well, 7 ships of our 12 had to cloak.

The rest had a Wild Weasel ready and launched that instead.

If we had not been able to cloak or launch WW, the incoming drones were easily enough to destroy us all, since our Phasers were not ready to fire again yet.

But before any ship cloaked or used a Wild Weasel, all our ships fired Plasma Torpedoes at the incoming fighters.

All our Type G, S, and R Torps were 'shotgun' charged, so they'd fire a few Type F Torpedoes instead of one bigger one.

We fired everything we had, including the Type F's in stasis boxes.

All told, it was 77 Torpedoes.

And we'd waited until the fighters were close enough that each Torpedo took out its target even though the fighters all fired at Torpedoes, to reduce their warhead strength.

But that left 7 fighters incoming and we had nothing left. well, almost nothing.

When they got to range 4, the Caravan-class Hydran tug, which had a battle pod attached, fired 2 Hellbores and hit 2 fighters.

Each took 7 damage, but that's not enough to cripple it.

Nor did it scare them off.

Then when they got to range 2, the tug and Bleriot each fired overloaded Fusion Beams, 6 total.

We'd have waited until they got closer, but that was as close as they were going to get to those 2 slow ships and it looked like they intended to ram our Dreadnought, so we had to fire then.

Well, the Fusion Beam hits were enough to finish off the 2 damaged fighters, and damage, though not cripple, all but one of the rest.

Then our former scatter pack shuttles surprised them by firing Phaser 3's into them.

It took a dozen Phaser 3 hits to do it, but we finished them off.

Then suddenly the battle was over.

In just seconds, all four enemy forces, each of which looked completely overwhelming, melted away to nothing, leaving us singed but intact.

We recovered our fighters, shuttles and Pseudo-Fighters as fast as we could, all while still flying towards the border at our best speed, which was pretty slow since even tugs don't tow something as big as a StarBase very quickly.

The Lyran fleet behind us were racing to catch up to us, and were quickly closing the distance.

But while they were passing through the gap we'd cut in their minefield, they ran afoul of the mines we'd laid there.

Of course their sensors said there was a minefield there, but they ignored them, since they assumed it was the one they'd laid and which we'd cut a gap through - they were staying carefully in that gap, so they figured they were safe.

And as I said before, we lay mines to destroy, rather than damage.

We'd set a few of our mines to be automatic - triggered by passing ships, but several more to be what they call 'chain controlled' - that's triggered by the explosion of another mine.

And we'd played tricks with timing too - letting some ships pass and setting other mines to go off only on the second valid target that went by.

So their first ships - two frigates they had scouting ahead, passed by without problems.

Then their lead elements made it almost all the way through the minefield, past several active mines, when a chain of explosions went up and down the whole gap all at once.

Our automatic mines at the end of the gap had gone off at the same time as the automatic mines at the start and middle of the gap, plus all the chain controlled mines went off too.

So we caught almost their whole fleet in the explosions.

I bet we could have caught the whole fleet if we'd had a minelayer with us. But we had to make do with the mines our ships normally carry.

Now one of our 12 ships was just on loan from the Hydrans, so it didn't have a minerack.

But the rest did.

That's 11 mineracks holding 44 large mines, and a group of 4 large mines will destroy anything less than a dreadnought & even cripple that dreadnought.

Now not all the minegroups we'd laid actually hit ships - we'd set some in places where the enemy might go, but didn't.

But we still had enough successful groups of mines to take out their whole fleet, except 4 destroyers bringing up the rear, and the two scout frigates in front.

We'd laid mines for the scout frigates too, but hadn't guessed right, so they got away.

Of course the situation was now completely changed.

Instead of fleeing towards safety from a superior force, now we were basically at safety, since nothing was left between us and the friendly forces waiting at the border.

And the superior Lyran force had been shattered.

So Admiral Andrews immediately gave chase to the fleeing destroyers and frigates, but they got away due to head start and higher initial speed.

Also making a successful getaway were the ships which had dropped off those fighters and PF we'd fought.

They were probably Auxiliary Carriers (freighters converted to launch fighters) but we'll never know - they had a huge head start and made a clean getaway.

So most of our force turned around & went raiding in the enemy rear-areas - looking for small groups of ships they could ambush as before.

And while he did that, the tug and StarBase, with Bleriot escorting them, got to where the Hydrans wanted it and started setting it back up.

See, when the Lyrans started the war, they took out a couple Hydran Battlestations along the border.

The Hydrans bought this StarBase from us and wanted it to replace one of the lost Battlestations. So we took it to that position, set the Positional Stabilizers, met the freighters that carried its new Fighters, PF's, and mines as well as its new crew, and spent a while fortifying and preparing for defense.

Now this whole escapade had been Fuzzy Belly's idea, with Admiral Andrews' full support. And it had hurt the Lyrans significantly. So we gave them both a promotion.

FuzzyBelly is now a Rear-Admiral, and will be in charge of 4th fleet, which mostly doesn't exist yet - not until some of the ships we are building or have captured come online, but when it does it will probably be dispersed in small groups and do patrol and convoy escort duties.

Mac Andrews is now a Grand Admiral.

My guys tell me there is no such rank - that it just comes from stories.

But they forget, the Trader Joe Space Navy is mine, and I can create new ranks if I want to.

So he's a Grand Admiral now.

This whole thing was good for us in a number of ways. Not only did it seriously weaken the Lyrans, making Fleet 2's defense contract easier, but we captured 5 Lyran ships and a bunch of Z-Y fighters.

And what's more, it gave our WhizKids some ideas.

On hearing about the battle, some of our WhizKids said it should be easy to take an Electronic Warfare drone, and alter it so that, instead of doing complex jamming or counter-jamming, it simply appears to be a non-specific ship of a certain size – basically a very simplified Wild Weasel. We could just program it what path to follow and what size ship to pretend to be, and it will fly out and trigger mines for us the same way that our Wild Weasels did.

That would make minefields easy to defeat.

We have them working on it & will deploy them to all ships when they finish it.

And then I was surprised when a baggage handler called me with an idea.

He'd been in Fleet 2's recent battle, working hard to load scatter pack shuttles.

He said the process was inefficient and showed me detailed plans and calculations for how to do it better.

See, normally dangerous things like drones and mines are stored as safely as possible and moved just one at a time, to eliminate the possibility of accidents.

And it takes a while to remove their safety packaging before you can use them. Now that's fine, we don't want them blowing up inside our ships.

But Erlenmeyer - that's our former baggage handler who came up with this idea and got promoted to WhizKid, figured out a better way.

He pointed out that it is possible, even standard in certain circumstances, to use a ships transporters to move things from one part of the ship to another part.

Now that'd help with moving the drones, but not with removing the packaging or loading them quickly onto the shuttle.

For that, young Erlenmeyer designed 2 new things.

One is a set of packaging that protects just as well, but comes off very easily - just type in one code and it all falls off and springs clear, revealing the other thing - a pre-configured rack that can store the drones safely, but can also be slipped, as a unit, into a shuttle to make it be a scatter-pack.

And it doesn't need any changes before it is ready to fire - just plug it in.

This Drone Cartridge would be harder to move down hallways etc, since it is large and contains 6 highly explosive drones, but is easy to send from cargo straight into a shuttle via transporter.

And he has designs for other sizes too, so we can load the Heavy Transport Shuttles just as easily.

So where we'd normally use 6 complete deck crews to load a scatter pack shuttle as fast as we can; with this we will be able to type in a code from the transporter room to strip off the packaging, then use the transporter to move the Drone Cartridge straight into a shuttle.

Once this is built, & tested to find and work out any bugs, I look forward to deploying it as fast as we can.

In talking to young Erlenmeyer, it was clear he has a first rate mind and education.

I don't know how someone with such a good mind slipped through the cracks and wound up working as just a baggage handler - maybe it's because he is completely the opposite of ambitious.

Still we'll have to look into that and make sure that can't happen again - we want folks at their level of ability, not below it.

Anyway, we're happy to have him working as a WhizKid now.

And with the money we got for selling a former-Lyran StarBase to the Hydrans, we bought a few things.

First, we called up the Black Ledger clan and arranged to buy several locked cloaking devices, which they sell for cheap since they are locked and currently unusable.

We can unlock them though, and we are getting really good use out of the ability to cloak, and want to keep that even with our new ships.

Sure, we have some spares, but don't want to run out.

We also bought from them the plans to build Kzinti Strike Carriers, and Romulan SparrowHawks.

Then we bought 5 more Large Q-ships from the Kzinti, since we like to have a mix of types and since the Hydran shipyards are busy right now.

We named them Sopwiths Rainbow, Scooter, Snail, Snark, Snipe.

Another reason we bought them from the Kzinti is so they'll be right next to the last thing we bought with our windfall: a Battlestation for Area 2, right there on the border between the Kzinti, Lyrans, and Wyn, and not far from the Klingons.

Sure, we'd planned to use a Mobile Logistics Base for that, but it looks like we'll have uses for those around here.

Plus our tugs are busy and likely to stay busy, and this saves travel time, hauling the thing down there.

We'll still be shipping fighters, mines, crew & so forth to it, but that goes a lot faster than hauling a base itself.

The Kzinti shipyards aren't busy right now, so they can get a Mobile base in place quick and start upgrading it to Battlestation right away.

It will be nice to have that there, to greatly help solidifying trade routes, repair our ships and all the other things we used to do with Oz and will soon be doing again.

We named it Narnia and will be configuring it just like Oz was when it was just a Battlestation.

And given our recent experience with how fragile bases can be, we're putting plenty of mines around it, or all sorts. Mostly these will be command-controlled by the base, so we don't have to worry about ships straying off a safe path.

And we'll have lots and lots of captor mines - that's the kind armed with weapons. They'll be able to shoot drones, Plasma Torpedoes Type F, Photon Torpedoes, and Phasers from all around the base at varying distances & should be a nice surprise to any attackers.

Though, while the captor mines will be a surprise for the first attacker, many of our defenses are obvious - the goal is to make the place so expensive to attack, in terms of losses an attacker would suffer, that there would be no possible way that any benefits from attacking would outweigh the costs.

The Lyrans we captured are prisoners of war, unlike the Romulans and rogues we captured before and could treat as pirates. So we turned them over to the Hydrans to add to their other prisoners of war.


	17. Chapter 17

Captain's Log, Stardate Out of the frying Pan...

Well things looked really good after the raid that Fuzzy Belly and Mac Andrews pulled on the Lyrans.

We thought it would take a while before they could go on the offensive again.

And while they were defensive, with big holes in their defense line, we could raid and ambush them, which is where our ships excel.

I guess it should be no surprise that that was obvious to them too, or that they should do something about it.

See the usual allies of the Lyrans are the Klingons, but they had not joined the fight this time. They had a local insurrection from a slave race to put down, and they said that the Lyrans should have plenty of ships to go it on their own.

Well, they're in the fight now.

The Klingons declared war on the Hydrans and sent fleets across the border.

And somehow the Lyrans came up with another fleet again very quickly. They, of course, also pressed an attack.

So the Hydrans are on the defensive again, and most of second fleet has had to go on the defensive with them.

Though Admiral Andrews was able to spare 6 ships for commerce raiding and ambushes behind the lines. That's just 2 groups of a destroyer and 2 frigates each, but knowing him, they will make a large contribution to the war effort.

We sent 3 shiny new SkyHawk-E's which we'd just completed to go join 2nd fleet. And the Kzinti-built Strike Carrier will travel with them to go pick up its commander, Admiral Fuzzy Belly, and then assist 2nd fleet for a while.

Anyway, the Hydrans, now fighting on 2 fronts, hired 3rd fleet in a hurry, so Commodore Albrecht is on his way to help a Hydran Planet which is under Klingon attack.

Third fleet is currently the following 13 ships, with options for more already negotiated (we'll send those when they become available):

The Klingon-built ships we captured from the Romulans, including a KC8VR dreadnought, 2 KRC command cruisers, 2 KRM Maulers, 2 KD5R cruisers, 3 K5R frigates, and a KF5RB frigate.

The fleet also includes the Falcon Heavy Carrier, and the new King Eagle, which was named Sunny for exploring a nova.

And until 3rd fleet receives more of it's permanent ships, we've loaned it our 2 KRT tugs.

They have carrier pods attached and went along with 3rd fleet.

They will normally be part of 4th fleet, along with our other tugs, and the Kzinti Strike Carrier, but 3rd fleet needed them for a while – at least until we get the captured Lyran ships crewed and up to speed, which will happen before we get any more new ships built.

Since we captured that Lyran StarBase, our navy's reputation has soared, so we're getting many more requests for convoy escort and patrol contracts.

We expect the tugs to be busy with that, as soon as they can be spared from current duties. And currently they are pretty busy - we only have good old Stumpy towing Oz at the moment, with the KRT's off with 3rd fleet and the Kzinti tugs off towing the new Mobile Logistics Bases and their pods, to strategic points to help shore up the Hydran defenses.

It takes 4 tugs each to tow a mobile base and all its pods, which took all 8 of our existing and newly built Kzinti-style tugs.

Now Commodore Albrecht made a request before he left.

He explained his plans & I agree with them, so we sent two groups of two ships straight to the Klingon border nearest the Hydran planet where Fleet 3 is going.

The first two ships are our newly built Klingon-style Monitor, and the repaired Kzinti CVL named Spindly to escort it.

The second group is the two Romulan Monitors we captured a long while back. Each has a Gorn Battle Pod attached.

Each group has a Klingon Battlestation at the border they are assigned to attack.

That sounds like a tall order for just two ships, but the plan for it sounds doable.

And our ships have our usual style of upgrades, which should help.

For the new monitor, that means we swapped out the 6 Phaser 2's for Phaser 1's, 4 of the Phaser 3's for Gatling Phasers and the other 4 Phaser 3's out for Drone Launchers.

Plus we decided to try it with Photon Torpedoes instead of Disruptors.

And instead of one of the more usual pods, we have attached a newly built Federation Battle Pod. That should give it significant oomph.

And each group of 2 ships has 8 PF's with it.

Anyway, it's what we have available at the moment & so it's what we're sending.

And perhaps more dramatic than all that, Oz has changed course – we're no longer being towed to our chosen spot at Area 1.

Now we're being towed to the Klingon border to help shore up Hydran Defenses there.

It's nearby and Stumpy can get us there quickly.

Plus our upgrade to StarBase is so close to being done as hardly matters, so we've got significant fighting power and should be able to complicate the Klingon plans pretty well.

Most of the ships that were with us are off in fleets now, and we dropped off the Habs we were towing, since they don't want to go near a fight, but we still have Stumpy and a ton of fighters and PF's, plus some ships that will be online soon.

We have a lot more fighters and PF's than before, since a StarBase has 6 attachment points for pods, and the pods we've attached are Federation Carrier Pods. They have 2 full squadrons each, and attachments for 8 PF's.

Like always, we swapped the Antidrone launchers on those for drone launchers.

And while we were attaching pods, we noticed that the 7th section up on top still has attachment points for 3 pods. So we put 3 Federation Battle Pods up there.

Now each of those pod attachment points actually docks 2 pods, but one of those always has to be a cargo pod, for technical reasons.

All those cargo pods are sure nice and will really help our trading and transshipping businesses, but they don't mean much for defending ourselves.

So while, compared to before, we look almost completely undefended, we're not.

Now, admittedly, a couple squadrons of our fighters will be down for upgrades at any given time, but we still have a lot.

Why are they down for upgrades?

The WhizKids finished that thing they were looking into where we put the cockpit into Stasis instead of using an ejection seat.

In the tests they showed me, it works great.

And it actually saves a little weight over the ejection seat approach. So we're installing it as fast as we can. Preserving out pilots is important, and it's dangerous out there.

Of course my WhizKids couldn't just look at a lightened fighter, say "that's nice" and walk away without trying to spend that weight allowance on some improvement.

Now it wasn't much weight saved, yet my guys still found a useful thing to do with it.

Bonuses for all of them, of course.

Anyway, it isn't often done, but fighters can actually mount 2 Electronic Warfare pods, over and above everything they normally mount.

Now normally Electronic Warfare is a stalemate anyway - with ECM matching ECCM and canceling out, and there are technical maximums for how much of each you can get any value from, so for the most part nobody bothers mounting EW pods.

And doing so makes the fighters slower, and dogfight worse, so it's all cost and no benefit normally.

But, a little known technicality is that EW pods can be mounted on fighters in place of drones, with no cost in performance.

Nobody does that either, but my WhizKids realized that the opposite is also true - Instead of mounting 2 EW pods over and above the usual fighter loadout & slowing it down, we could mount 2 drones.

They'll also slow it down, but only until they're fired.

Now that's not the part where they spent the saved weight - it can be done as-is. They spent the weight in expanding the possibilities.

Normally fighters carry Type 1 drones, which are a little lighter than the Type 3 drones that some fighters can carry.

That's where they spent the weight - any Type 1 drones we could carry, including the 2 extras we can mount instead of EW pods, can be Type 3 instead. Type 3 drones, and the lesser-known Type 2 which we can also mount now, are far more effective than Type 1's are.

Now our poor TAASG fighters are the only ones that did not have their own Stasis Generator & so will not benefit from this change.

But we weren't as impressed with those as with the others anyway - they can fire several drones, which is nice, but overall not as nice as our other fighters, in most situations.

Still, they are useful sometimes, which is why we will be working on our captured Z-Y fighters, to convert them to ZYG the same way that we converted the TAAS fighters to TAASG.

See, while one is designed and built by the Kzinti and the other by the Klingons, and they look different on the outside, they have identical performance, capabilities, and statistics.

As ZYG's, we'd use them, though not as a first choice, so it is not a high priority.

As for the Habs we dropped off, neither the ones with our crew's relatives (Apple and Orange), nor the ones with Trader Joe University, Uh, I mean Campus (Concorde and Muscadine) wanted to be on the front line close to the fighting.

They recognize that there is nowhere safe, but they don't want to be quite as unsafe as that.

So we detoured just a little to a minor Hydran planet that was nearby, and left them there for now.

We'll pick them up again later, so they can settle where Oz does.

That Hydran planet, by the way, has one of the simplest and most pronounceable Hydran names I've ever seen - Grfsnbixyplykk. I can almost say that if I go really slow.

It is a ringed planet and apparently the name means "Beautiful rings of sublime morning sparkles".

When I suggested that, for simplicity, we just call it Ringer, I was told "your soul has no poetry". If that means I'd rather use 2 syllables rather than 11 to refer to something, then yes, I have no poetry.

Anyway, the citizens of Ringer are glad to have the Habs there, for the extra defense they can provide.

And the folks on the Habs are glad to be able to sightsee on and around the planet.

Captain's Log, Stardate Oz fights again

So as Stumpy and Oz get closer to the Klingon border and into the part of Hydran territory that has had a lot of Klingon ships moving through it, we've seen a few Klingon scouts watching us.

They don't watch for long, since we send PF's to try to chase them down and destroy them. With the significant head start they have, we haven't caught any yet.

So we sent most of our PF's out patrolling in circles around Oz at a fair distance to try to prevent further scouting, or, at worst, give us warning if they come in for an attack.

And an attack seemed likely, since a StarBase is a high value target & we look defenseless. We certainly can't fire our Phaser 4's while being towed, and it would likely surprise them that we can fire anything at all.

And sure enough, a couple days after the first scouts saw us, and not long before we arrived at the point where we planned to stay and defend, we got attacked.

Apparently the Klingons had needed a little while to gather up enough ships for the job. But once they did, they came in with their typical ferocity: a fleet of almost 30 ships drove in straight for us at high speed.

It was a dreadnought, 14 cruisers and 14 frigates as follows: 1 C8V dreadnought, 3 D7C command cruisers, 3 D6CV carriers, 2 D6M Mauler cruisers, 1 Tug with 2 carrier pods, 3D5 cruisers, 2 AD5 escort cruisers, 11 F5 frigates, 3 E4 frigates.

In case you're wondering, a Command Cruiser is just a heavy cruiser with an extra weapon or two and a "flag bridge' for coordinating a small task force.

The Klingons had already launched all 72 of their fighters: 66 Z-Y and 6 Z-H 'heavy fighters'.

They were not feeling very communicative: after announcing that they were going to "annihilate" us, they said nothing more.

We did have a group of 18 PF's that they had to pass by to get to Oz, but if our PF's got close enough to fire at the enemy ships, they'd just have been wiped out without achieving anything.

So they fled back towards us, while all our fighters launched and went out towards them to protect Oz and Stumpy.

We had 24 fighters down for upgrade, but still launched 135: 75 Stinger 2's and 60 A-10G's.

Well it wasn't long before both groups started trading volleys of drones at long range.

Drones fly further than any other weapon, so for a while, drone volleys were the only thing happening.

In the first wave, our fighters, ships, and scatter pack shuttle fired Multi-Warhead drones that MIRV'ed into 675 little drones.

Since it was a certainty that the enemy would have Wild Weasels prepared, we aimed at only the frigates.

Those only have one shuttle each & we hoped to use that up quick.

And so it was: they each used their Wild Weasel, causing all those drones to blow up harmlessly - well, they took out the Wild Weasels really well, but that's it.

Their first wave was 60 drones targeted at Oz. They really wanted to take out our base. Militarily, I can understand why, but the idea still offends me – I like Oz and don't want it blown up.

Anyway, Oz mounts 9 Gatling Phasers, plus 24 more on the carrier pods, and a dozen Phaser 1's on the battle pods.

We had no trouble shooting down those drones.

Our second wave was 615 little drones targeting the frigates again, so the bigger ships would get no use out of the Wild Weasels they had prepared.

They fired at them with everything & took out 483 drones, leaving 132 spread evenly among their frigates.

That left their frigates with most of their front shields gone, but no internal damage.

Their second wave was 60 drones again, and we shot all of those down & still had Phasers left.

Our third wave was only 60 little drones, but they arrived before the Klingons could fire again, except for their AntiDrone systems, which took down a few.

The remaining drones finished the job of downing the front shields on each frigate, and did just a teeny bit of damage to each (1 point to some, 2 to others).

Well, they were unfazed and kept it up, with another wave of 60 drones at Oz.

While we could have shot down about 50 of those, we launched a Wild Weasel instead. Both because we don't like taking damage, and to give them hope.

See, we knew they had a lot of drones left & wanted them to keep firing those at Oz rather than giving that us as hopeless and firing at other targets instead.

And sure enough, as soon as that Wild Weasel was gone, they fired 144 more drones at OZ.

When they got there, we shot them all down with Gatling Phasers.

That was strangely satisfying – it's nice to fool the enemy, and also nice to have effective defenses.

But in the meantime, our fighters and PF's had been closing in on them.

About the time our 3rd wave of drones was hitting their frigates, our fighters and PF's had closed to range 6.

We surprised them by firing our Plasma Torpedoes then, and turning away. They expected us to wait at least until range 5, and keep coming even then, since Plasma F's do more at range 5 and under, and Stinger 2 fighters can't do much unless they're right on top of you.

So they figured we were running and fired their Disruptors then.

That's exactly why we turned away, of course - since we have no way of defending against Disruptors, we wanted them to use them before the range closed in and made them more effective.

And if they hadn't fired, we could have kept retreating until the PF's could fire Plasmas again & then come in for another pass.

Anyway, their Disruptors crippled 8 of our A-10G's and killed 6 more.

And at the same time as they fired Disruptors, they also launched 144 little dogfght drones at our fighters - 2 each for 72 targets.

Two of those is just enough to kill most fighters, and that guaranteed we'd respond instead of accepting the damage, as some folks would.

Well our fighters used their chaff pods and two thirds of those drones got lost and hit nothing.

The other 24 fighters had to use half of their Gatling shots each to shoot down drones.

Now, we had targeted one Plasma Torpedo on each fighter, and 2 each at their dreadnought and Maulers, and they had closed in a bit from when the Torpedoes were fired, so we didn't have any warhead reduction from range.

Well they decided that was enough to use a Wild Weasel for, and those 3 ships did, with the rest of the fleet hanging back with those 3.

See, the enemy fleet didn't want to split up, since they couldn't support each-other if they did, so they kept advancing right into our Plasma Torpedoes, which they could never outrun anyway.

But they were able to fire Phasers again by this time.

And they knew they needed their fighters alive if they were to have any chance of defeating our fighters. S

o they concentrated all the fleet's Phaser firepower on our Torpedoes and weakened them across the board, so that 66 of their fighters survived with only crippling damage.

The other 6 blew up.

Right about then, the Klingon fleet closed to within range 30 of Oz.

We'd been waiting for that and fired Photon Torpedoes in what they call a "Narrow Salvo".

That's an all-or-nothing kind of approach where all your shots have exactly the same aim point.

See, most volleys try to spread out their shots over the target: if they don't dodge, all hit, but everybody dodges, so spreading them out that way is designed to give you plenty of hits no matter how they dodge.

Anyway, we've got a good crew on Oz, and good gunners, so we had a good chance to hit and felt a Narrow Salvo was worth a try.

What's more, we had installed those Ubitron Interface Modules we'd bought & they help with aiming Photon Torpedoes.

Now they help with Disruptors too, and so does something called DERFACS (Disruptor Extended Range Fire Attenuation Control System), of which we'd captured a few.

Now even though it isn't written anywhere that DERFACS helps with Photons, our WhizKids simply hooked it up and found that it did.

They said it was obvious: "If a=b and b=c, then a=c", by which they mean that if UIM is compatible with Photons and Dirsuptors, and DERFACS is compatible with Disruptors, then it must be compatible with Photons too.

Whatever, it worked.

And between all these things, our chance to hit with the narrow salvo was better than two thirds.

And we didn't stop there – we Proximity-fused our Photon Torpedoes too.

Now what that normally means is that the Torpedo senses the target as it approaches, and when the target enters the blast radius, the Torpedo detonates.

But the Federation, who developed these, must have either a mental blindspot, or some lazy programmers.

When we first got, and started installing, our Photon Torpedo Launchers, it took my WhizKids all of 30 seconds to realize that all the parts are already in place for a better system – that all they'd have to do is change the programming in the proximity fuse a tiny bit, so that instead of deciding to detonate the moment the target is in range, it instead detonates the moment the target gets further away than it had been a moment ago.

See, the way it is, Proximity fused Torpedoes do only half damage since they explode a distance away from the target, even if they had been on track to hit it.

But with our slight programming change, ours will only detonate at a distance from the target if they were going to miss, but a direct hit will still be a direct hit.

So with these improved proximity fuses, we were virtually certain to have our Torpedoes do some damage, and still about two thirds likely to get full damage.

Anyway, we lucked out: our two-thirds chance came up, and we and hit a D6M with all 18 Photon Torpedoes for their full 8 damage each, totaling 144 damage and turning it into an expanding cloud of gas with just 'one' hit.

Not that it really mattered, since we had more than enough fighters on hand to do the job, but at least they'll think twice about taking on Oz again if they get the chance, whether or not we have fighters present.

Anyway, as that was happening our Stinger-2's sped up, leaving those slow A-10G's behind, and got right on top of the Klingon ships quick.

Now Stinger 2's dish out damage like almost nothing else, if they can get in close.

Destroying the frigates took the firepower of just over 1 Stinger 2 each.

Most of the rest of their ships required the firepower of 3 Stingers.

It took 5 Stinger 2's to take out the tug, and 7 to take out the dreadnought.

All told, taking out everything the Klingons had didn't even require all of our Stinger 2's.

While that was happening, the Klingon Antidrone systems took down another 8 of our fighters, with 14 more damaged.

Their Maulers had used up all their energy shooting drones, and by the time they recharged, there were already destroyed.

Our PF's took out their remaining Z-Y and Z-H fighters, using up not quite 1 Gatling Phaser each to do so.

And our A-10G's were suddenly left with nothing to do - everybody else had already finished off the Klingons before they got close enough to use their own Gatling Phasers.

The Klingon Z-H fighter didn't help them significantly.

As with all other 'heavy fighters', it is intended to be an effective defense against fighters.

They are twice the size of regular fighters, so you can only have half as many in the same hangar space.

That's why we've never bothered with 'heavy fighters' – you only have half as many, but they are definitely not twice as effective to make up for it.

They do tend to take down opposing fighters reasonably well if they're not totally outnumbered, but not well enough to be worth bringing them.

As always, I'm glad we successfully defended ourselves.

And I'm also glad that the Klingon forces in this vicinity have been depleted.

But I suspect we could have done better - that our pilots trusted so much in their new Stasis cockpits that they were not as careful as usual to avoid getting hit.

We lost 14 fighters after all, with 22 more damaged.

Still, I like to make the best of things, so I bought t-shirts for our pilots.

They say "I was annihilated and all I got was this lousy T-shirt".

It's an ancient tradition, in a way.

At first, I got them just for the 14 pilots whose fighters got destroyed – yes, all 14 survived – the Stasis Cockpits work great.

But then I got a slightly different version for everybody else, pilots and crew as well, just so everyone could join in the fun.

A fun lighthearted work environment is important.

We rounded up the hulks of the Klingon ships that didn't blow up outright, and the pieces of those that did blow up.

Some hulks are beyond repair and will just be scrapped.

But the bigger ships tend to be more durable in every way, so we did get the Dreadnought, the Tug, plus two D7C Command Cruisers, a D5 and an AD5, as well as all 3 D6CV's.

We'll be repairing those and altering them to our usual standards – making them, in fact, a lot like the ones we captured from the Romulans, but that and training crews for them, will take a while.

Still, when they are ready to use, we have plenty of uses for them.

As for the crews we captured with the Klingon ships, some went one way and some went another.

See, the Klingons have several species of intelligent aliens in their empire, and they use some of them as slaves to crew their ships.

So the actual Klingons went to prisoner of war camps run by the Hydrans.

But we set the slaves free, and helped them get to wherever they wanted to go.

Some had no place to go and wanted a job with us.

After careful vetting to make sure they would fit in, we hired them.

They already know the basics of how to crew a ship, but there's a lot they need to learn about our company culture, among other things.

Well, Oz arrived at a strategic position on the Klingon border without further incident.

For the first time in a long time, we've set the Positional Stabilizers and are ready to fire Phaser 4's again.

And we have a lot more of those, now that the upgrade to Starbase is effectively complete – all the practical systems are done, but there are a lot of little things like light fixtures, paint, and carpeting that still need doing.

Still, if the Klingons want to come at us again before we're painted, they're more than welcome to.

We are laying an amazingly dense field of captor mines around Oz.

We can recover and re-use them when we're ready to move again after the fighting dies down.


	18. Chapter 18

Captain's Log, Stardate Your turn now

So now it's the Klingon's turn to be attacked.

Our attack forces arrived at 2 of their Battlestations which guard their border with the Hydrans.

Though it hardly seems right to call them 'attack forces' when they're so small: just 2 Monitors in one and Spindly the CVL (light carrier) with another Monitor in the other force.

Still, surprise counts for a lot, and our guys were successful.

The first one took longer, so I'll describe it first.

Our Monitor and CVL de-cloaked at range 30 from the Klingon Battlestation.

The base immediately fired Phaser 4's and Disruptors at the Monitor, but only did 6 damage, which was effectively zero, since we had put more energy into shield reinforcement than that.

So then the Monitor, named Pointy, started the bombardment by firing 12 Photon Torpedoes at that Klingon Base. He fired them Narrow Salvo, Proximity Fused, with DERFACS, and so on, since what worked for our base works elsewhere too.

But all he got was a proximity hit, doing 48 damage.

This knocked down the enemy's shield and did a couple points of internal damage, but wasn't as much as we'd been hoping for.

Still, it was better than if they had not been proximity fused, since then they'd simply have missed.

Anyway, about this time a patrol of 12 enemy PF's showed up headed for the base, so our 8 PF's went off to meet them.

Well, the Klingon base had launched 9 Z-H heavy fighters, and those now took off after our PF's.

So then the 9 Gladiator-2G fighters we had launched took off after their fighters.

But not everything was involved in that odd game of follow-the-leader: they had 3 Police Gunboats (also called G-2's) at the base & those came after our ships.

Well we had planned to cloak again right after firing, so the base couldn't shoot us while we reloaded our Photon Torpedoes, which takes twice as long as it does to reload a Phaser 4.

But it would have been a really bad idea to cloak again and let those gunboats get close where they could shoot us while we were de-cloaking and helpless.

So instead of cloaking, we fired 17 drones at the G-2's.

It would have been more, but we didn't want to lose a Scatter-pack shuttle unnecessarily when we re-cloaked.

We didn't even bother to use Multi-Warhead drones, since G-2 gunboats don't have a lot of weapons.

We did use double-sized drones though, so the ones that got through did 24 damage each.

And it only takes 2 of those to pop a G2.

Well, they shot drones at ours, killing 6, and fired Phaser 2's at our drones, and hit 6 times, but only killed 3 drones.

The remaining 8 drones had no trouble wiping out those 3 little ships.

Then we cloaked while we reloaded.

In the meantime, our fighters were maneuvering against theirs.

Those Z-H's, like other 'heavy fighters', are supposed to be good at destroying regular fighters – marketed as being able to take out twice their own number and survive it, so we were being careful.

They turned to face us, so they could use their Disruptors, but our fighters, being much faster, had no trouble choosing a range and staying at it, while we split into 2 groups and surrounded them.

Well, when we were ready, the 5 Gladiator fighters in one group closed to range 10 from the Z-H's, fired Plasma F's and drones, then turned and moved away.

The 9 Z-H's responded by firing their Disruptors at our fighters.

Well that did 8 damage to 4 Gladiators, crippling them, and 4 damage to the other one.

But our second group of fighters had coordinated with the first group and was moving in fast.

The second group didn't fire drones until the enemy Heavy Fighters had used their own drones to shoot down our drones.

Then we fired and made them do it again.

We waited, so the individual drone attacks were each too small to waste a chaff pod against.

And while we didn't get any hits from drones – we didn't expect to.

Mainly we'd wanted to make them use up most of their own drones.

And they did use up two thirds of them.

Well they shot at our Plasma Torpedoes and coordinated their fire.

Plus they spun so they could use both their front and rear-facing weapons.

But 4 of them still took 7 damage each from our Torpedoes, while a 5th took 11 damage.

None of those were crippled, but every little bit helps.

Well our Gladiators are much faster than the Z-H's are, but there was still time for the heavy fighters to recharge their weapons before the gladiators got there.

So when our group of 4 fighters fired Plasma Torpedoes, those Torpedoes got the same treatment as the first group.

So 3 Z-H's took 12 damage, and one took 16, destroying it.

The Z-H's fired their last drones at our fighters, which we had no trouble shooting down.

Then the dogfight started.

While it helped that the Z-H's had taken damage, it wasn't really important.

We had no trouble shooting them all down, even though we were outnumbered eight to four.

Sure, the Gladiator is only in the middle of the pack as far as dogfighting goes, but it is still so much better than a Z-H that we didn't even need our other group of 5 fighters to come and help.

All the heavy fighters were down before our second group could have gotten there anyway.

Well, our PF's didn't need any help, so our surviving fighters, yes, all nine of the nine we'd sent out, flew back to Spindly the light carrier to land, re-arm and repair.

You can do a lot of repairs on a fighter in surprisingly little time.

So, once again, my opinion of heavy fighters suffers.

They lost all 9 and we lost none, even though we started out technically outnumbered two to one, as far as the marketing literature says.

Anyway, our PF's met their PF's and the fight went like this:

They fired 24 drones, 2 per PF since that's all they have.

We shot them down, which used half our Phasers, since these were Centurion-G's we'd brought, and not Hydran Harrier PF's which have more Gatlings.

Then we did our usual trick of launching Plasma Torpedoes and turning away.

Predictably, they fired all 12 Disruptors at us, damaging our shields about a third of the way each.

They each shot their 2 Phaser 2's at our Plasmas, weakening them so the 8 PF's they hit each had about a third of their front shield left.

Then we did it again.

See, the Centurions have 5 Plasma F launchers, but can't fire them all without waiting a bit between shots, or it'd shake the craft to pieces.

So our second volley hit for full damage, since they couldn't fire again yet.

Knowing that, we targeted all 8 on the 4 enemy PF's that had not yet been hit.

Well, 2 Plasmas each was enough to destroy them.

We'd have turned again & again & kept that up, but there was no need.

Our third volley of Plasmas got weakened by their Phaser fire again, but still hit hard enough to wreck about a third of their systems.

They fired before they lost those systems, but we shot down their drones again and only lost a bit more shielding to hits from their Disruptors.

Then it was all over when our 4th Plasma volley hit them.

Not being damaged except for shields, our PF's stayed out on patrol near our attacking ships, while they worked on repairing their shields.

Meanwhile, back at the base assault, our ships uncloaked again once they'd recharged Photon Torpedoes.

This time their base shot at our light carrier and did 10 damage, which was reduced to nothing by our shield reinforcement.

See, we'd had Spindly bring a pod full of nothing but power reactors, since we figured the base would shoot at it and we wanted plenty of energy for shield reinforcement.

Anyway, our second volley of Photon Torpedoes all hit.

We'd done a narrow salvo again, since one large amount of damage all at once, gets past shield reinforcement a lot better than a steady trickle of damage does.

And we'd timed our shots, so the same shield we'd shot before is what we shot again.

So all 96 damage from the 12 Photon Torpedoes was done to the base itself.

That sounds like a lot, but bases are tough. It'd take almost 3 hits like that to destroy it from full health.

Well, then things got a little tedious – with the same cycle repeating.

Though each time we de-cloaked to fire, they did less damage to us as they lost more weapons. We missed once, got another proximity hit, and then a miss and another full hit which finally finished them off.

Well, this had all taken long enough that the help they'd called for finally arrived as we were getting ready to leave.

Their relief force was too late to save the base, but in time to try to destroy us, so they charged in.

It was 2 D6CV carriers and a flotilla of 3 F5 Frigates.

At the same time a force of 12 Klingon PF's approached from the side.

We sent our PF's to deal with their PF's, while our fighters went to deal with their fighters.

The Klingon commander of this area must favor heavy fighters, since that's what these D6CV carriers had launched.

Well, the fighters maneuvered as before, with ours dictating the ranges and placements because they are so much faster and more maneuverable, and making the 10 enemy Z-H's choose which of 2 groups to face.

But there was a key difference this time - when we dodged in to range 10 and fired Plasma Torpedoes, they did not fire Disruptors.

Instead they held them ready for when we got closer.

Well, our groups are well-coordinated, and our second group adapted to the situation and immediately dodged in to range 10 and fired their Torpedoes too.

Then both our groups held their distance beyond range 10, so the heavy fighters could not fire at us even if they changed their minds - they have a maximum range of 10 on fighter-mounted Disruptors.

Anyway, they shot drones at us & we shot them down as before, but we held our drone fire until the Plasmas hit.

Five of those heavy fighters got crippled by Torpedo hits, and four more were so damaged they were almost crippled.

Only one escaped any damage - so far that is.

Well, once our Torpedoes had crippled some, we fired all our Gatling Phasers at the Z-H's that were nearly crippled.

We knew we wouldn't do much from that range, but they couldn't take much more, so it balanced out.

We managed to cripple all four of them.

So now one of their fighters was still fine, but the other 9 were all crippled.

And crippled fighters lose the ability to use any weapon but Phasers. S

o the Disruptors which they'd held for later use were now useless, along with the drones they hadn't fired yet.

Now we stayed at long range and fired a drone at each crippled fighter, hoping to get them to use their Phasers defending themselves.

Some did, some didn't, since they were not sure how many drones we had.

Those who didn't use Phasers popped chaff pods instead, to make the drones lose targeting, and two thirds of those worked. But the rest had to use their Phasers anyway, or be destroyed by drones.

The ones who still had Phasers available for use, used them on us, scoring a point of damage on three of our fighters.

Meanwhile we fired our Phasers at them again, and finished off 2 cripples.

Well, we only had 2 drones each, but that was enough to repeat the same cycle, and we did.

We still didn't hit any with drones, but this time we only took 2 damage from their Phasers, while still killing 2.

And immediately after this cycle, the group we had behind them charged in at top speed.

Well their only intact fighter had to decide when to fire his Disruptors - the closer he let us get, the more damage he would do. And if he let us get to range 1, he might even kill one of our fighters with his Disruptors.

And he knew we were armed with Gatling Phasers, which do their best damage at range 1 or less.

So he held his fire, waiting to make the most of his one chance, and we surprised him by firing at range 2.

Now even though Gatlings aren't at their best at that range, they can do significant damage.

So between our 3 fighters we took out four of the 5 crippled fighters, and crippled the one that had not yet taken damage.

Then we closed to dogfight range and it was all over in no time.

Their 2 crippled fighters had no chance against our 3, and wouldn't have even if the odds were even and they were not damaged.

Ours are just that much better at dogfighting than theirs.

Meanwhile, our two ships were being charged by their five.

Our monitor got a good hit with a narrow salvo of Photon Torpedoes on one carrier, which went about two thirds of the way towards killing it.

Then our drones went out from each ship, though not from the scatter packs we'd launched - we held them back.

And that turned out to be the right decision, since the Klingons used Wild Weasels, after launching drones back at us & shooting Disruptors.

Their Disruptors did negligible damage to our shields, and they only launched 3 drones - that was all they had.

It was trivial to shoot those down.

Well, as soon as our first wave took out their Wild Weasels, we launched drones again.

This time we launched from one of the scatter packs, so our total went from 17 drones launched to 37.

Each F5 was able, by firing & then spinning to get its rear Phasers into play, to shoot down 6 drones.

And the carriers managed to shoot down another 16 between them.

Then the carriers, which have 2 shuttles, launched Wild Weasels again.

The F5 frigates only have one shuttle each, so they got hit with a drone each, which took down their shields and did a few points of internal damage.

Then we launched 20 more drones from the other HTS scatter pack and it was all over - they couldn't shoot down anything more just yet.

All 3 F5's blew up spectacularly, but we'd carefully aimed only enough drones at the carriers to take them out without blowing them up.

As for the 12 PF's they'd sent, apparently they'd heard what happened to the first 12.

So this latest group kept withdrawing from our PF's, seeking to remove them from the battle while not dying in the process.

When the Klingon ships and fighters got destroyed, their PF's fled at top speed.

We did not pursue, since it could have been an ambush, but also because it was time to leave.

We'd only fought the ships that happened to be nearby, and didn't want to get overwhelmed by the many ships the Klingons could bring to bear given a little time.

So while recovering fighters and PF's, we docked to the D6CV carriers and captured them, or rescued survivors, as you choose to see it. Then we towed them off quick while cloaked. See, a cloak covers the ship, and any ship it docks to. So they didn't catch us, even though we left the area quite slowly. See, Monitors have teeny little engines for some reason, so they move slow in any case, and a lot slower when towing something the size of a cruiser.

Well, by comparison the other attack we'd launched went very simply.

Our two monitors de-cloaked at range 10 from the other Klingon Battlestation and got shot by Phaser 4's and Disruptors as expected.

But that didn't bother our shields much - it takes time to chew thru a Monitor's shields at that range.

And we didn't give them time.

We launched 2 Plasma Torpedoes Type R, and 7 Type S at the base.

While those approached, the Klingoins launched fighters, but we fired our remaining Plasma S Torpedoes, charged Shotgun style, at those.

The Torpedoes hit, but these were heavy Fighters again, so they survived, just barely. We finished them off by using about half of of our Phaser 1's.

Before they blew up, they fired back with Disruptors, and managed to knock down about half the front shield on each monitor.

About that time, our Plasma Torpedoes impacted on their base and obliterated it.

And then their local picket ships - 2 G2 Police Frigates and 2 F5 Frigates, met the drones we'd sent out to meet them.

They were still too far out to shoot at our ships, and we'd sent plenty of drones, so despite their best efforts, they exploded.

Then those 2 monitors recovered PF's and came back to base.

The Klingons probably sent help to that base too, but we were long gone before it got there.

As for the crew on the carriers we captured, we did the same as before - we freed the slave crews while sending the Klingons to prisoner of war camps the Hydrans run.

In our usual after-action reviews, one of our WhizKids asked why Monitors have such pathetic engines.

Nobody knew why they are designed that way.

Our best guess is that it was either a cost-saving measure, or that they just couldn't fit more inside the hull.

I do know that when we looked at ways to fit bigger engines in the Monitor hull, we failed.

He pointed out that we already build a ship that has the answer to that problem - the Romulan WarBird doesn't have room in the hull for warp engines either.

So when they upgraded it to the WarEagle, they put the engines in external winglike pylons. When they upgraded again to the KingEagle, they expanded the size of those pylons to hold bigger engines.

We build KingEagles, including those external warp engine pylons.

Our WhizKids are looking into it, but so far it appears that we'll be able to just take a pair of those KingEagle warp engine pylons and attach them to a Monitor, about where its current engines are now.

All the structural bracing is there already, and should be more than adequate.

If not, it can be strengthened.

And then the space that the old warp engines used to occupy inside the hull, we can use for other things, like perhaps a Stasis Field Generator or two, or maybe some Plasma G launchers, or even just more shuttle bays.

We'll see how it works out.

It is an exciting idea.

The Monitor is a good ship type, but having real engines would make it a great ship type.

We've started building a couple more monitors and will look into putting the engine pylons on those.

We can't take apart the existing monitors to experiment on right now – they're needed for defense.

Captain's Log, Stardate up yer shaft

So Fleet 3 got involved in the fight against the Klingons today.

See, there was a Klingon fleet attacking a Hydran planet, and a smaller Hydran fleet defending it.

Apparently the name of the planet translates to "Magnificent Cerulean Panorama Exalting the Imagination and Ennobling the Psyche", but we'll just call it Blue Sky.

So anyway the Klingon's attention was fixed forwards towards the fleet and planet when we uncloaked at range 5 behind them and fired Plasma Torpedoes and drones.

Now the Hydrans don't use anything like drones or Plasma Torpedoes, so the Klingons didn't have any Wild Weasels ready.

They also hadn't been moving around a whole lot, so they couldn't turn rapidly with no notice.

Since we didn't de-cloak until they'd just fired a volley of drones, their other rear-firing weapons were inadequate to the need, and we wiped them out.

See, all they have that can fire to the rear is, Drones, Antidrones, plus a few Phaser 2's and 3's.

Now in a fleet that big, that's still quite a bit of firepower.

Oh, yah, I forgot to mention the size of the fleets.

The Hydrans had 25 ships - a Dreadnought, 9 cruisers, 10 destroyers and 5 frigates.

But the Klingons had 32 ships - two Dreadnoughts, 13 cruisers, and 17 frigates, specifically 1 C9, 1 C8, 2 D7C, 4 D7, 2 D6M, 1 Tug, 4 D5, 17 F5 variants.

So, between them, the Klingons had 81 Phaser 2's, 34 Phaser 3's and 21 AntiDrones facing to the rear.

Well, range 5 is a good range for Plasma Torpedoes, and a bad one for Phaser 2's and 3's.

They could do us some damage, but not a lot.

Anyway, the moment we uncloaked our small force of 15 ships, we got reminded just how aggressive the Klingons are - they immediately fired at us with everything they could.

They were in a tremendous hurry to shoot us – way too much of a hurry to bother coordinating fire, even if they could have talked with each other.

Oh yah, I forgot to mention that too - before he got anywhere near the fight, Commodore Albrecht called the Hydrans, explained his plans, got their agreement, worked out a very simple method of communication using mainly flashing lights and ship positions, & then had them start jamming communications as thoroughly as they could.

And before he de-cloaked, he noted and recorded the Klingon transponder codes & had his guys start working on getting our ships to pretend to be those same codes.

We'll get to why that was in a minute.

So we de-cloaked & got shot, and though we did take a lot of damage to our shields, none of our ships took significant damage.

If we'd given the Klingons more time to work with, we could have been seriously beaten up.

But we wasted no time launching drones and Plasma Torpedoes, shotgun charged because there were plenty of targets and they do more overall damage that way.

So 150 Type F Plasma Torpedoes went out, as well as 65 drones.

Their Antidrone systems knocked down 32 of those drones, but the rest hit for 792 damage between them.

And they had nothing they could do about our Torpedoes, so those hit for full strength - 3000 damage between them.

Well, the total damage it would take to destroy every ship in their fleet, plus burn through their shields to do it, was just over 3000, all told.

We'd spread out our fire evenly, and the Torpedoes arrived that way, but it was impossible to predict which drones would be shot down.

So a few Klingon ships survived as helpless derelicts, while the rest simply exploded.

Now, per our defense contract with the Hydrans, the agreement is that when they are central to the fight, as they were, they get the first 2 picks of any repairable derelicts, then we split the rest.

But in this case, they have an existing design for how to convert a D7 to their technology, since they captured and converted one long ago.

So they traded their first pick for 3 D7's.

We were happy to accept that trade, since it got us the C8 dreadnought.

Well, when all the haggling was done, they got 3 D7's, a D7c, and 3 F5 variants, while we got the C8 dreadnought, the Tug, and 2 F5L's.

Nothing else was repairable.

But all that came later, after the fleets left.

See, as soon as the Klingon fleet exploded, our fleet took off for the Klingon border and the Hydran fleet gave chase.

Or pretended to.

See, it was part of Commodore Albrecht's plan to have our ships pretend to be the Klingon ships they just destroyed, and the Hydrans pretend to chase us intent on destroying us.

Now for this to work, we had to leave our Falcon Heavy Carrier, the KingEagle, and one Tug, back at the planet Blue Sky, since their presence with the fleet would spoil the ruse.

So they stayed, captured the derelicts and protected the planet while the Hydran fleet was away.

And on our way to the Klingon Border we took as many measures as we could to make our pretend scenario believable.

We wanted to portray, as convincingly as possible, the ragged remnants of the Klingon fleet, having been beaten in battle, fleeing from a superior Hydran fleet towards the safety of a Klingon StarBase.

Now it may have been good enough just to see our 12 ships running from their 25, but Commodore Albrecht doesn't cut corners.

He left all our shield damage unrepaired, and had a lot of guys spend a lot of time faking the signs of battle damage on our hulls.

They even set off light explosives on our own hulls, in carefully judged locations and amounts, and similarly had our ships shoot each other, carefully and with the weapons set at very low power.

They spent a lot of time working on making it look like we'd been shot up pretty good, without actually damaging the ships except cosmetically.

Now the Hydran fleet followed the plan and kept up the communication jamming the whole way to the Klingon Starbase.

See, it's really hard to pretend to be someone else when you don't have their codes, names, protocols, and can't even show them one of their own race when they call you on visual.

But jamming fixes all of that.

We didn't need to give them the password of the day, or similar kinds of things, when neither they nor we could communicate at all.

And while Commodore Albreach was taking a risk, since no ruse is ever perfect, he knew the Klingons had never seen any part of 3rd fleet, and so had no idea that we had any ships in service that had been built by Klingons.

Between that, and all his other preparations, he figured the risk was acceptable, and I had agreed - that's why we'd sent out the Monitors to destroy a couple of Klingon Battlestations on the border - to prepare the way for this.

By destroying those BatleStations, we'd opened a section of their defensive line, so third fleet could convincingly "flee" to the nearest base - a StarBase.

We knew we'd only ever get one chance at this & wanted to make the most of it by taking out a StarBase instead of a smaller base.

And in another facet of the plan, the moment the fleets got far enough from the planet Blue Sky so that it could communicate again, it had sent the code word to our Mobile Bases and Tugs, which started them moving for Klingon Territory.

More on that later.

Back to the fleets.

They both raced at full speed for the Klingon Starbase, and just before they got close enough for it to observe them, they started trading long-range Phaser fire between the 2 fleets.

We'd carefully chosen the range so that we wouldn't take any real damage, though it would slowly weaken our rear shields, to make the ruse as believable as possible.

We didn't fire anything that the Klingons would not have had, so our rear-firing Gatling Phasers only fired occasional shots, pretending to be mere Phaser 3's.

Those were not enough to bother the Hydrans, or they might not have agreed to the plan.

Anyway, our leading units pulled up to the StarBase and turned around at range 2, as if to defend it from the attacking Hydran fleet.

Hydrans do need to get in close to fight, so pulling in close like that to defend was believable, and not anywhere near as threatening as if we'd moved to dock with the StarBase.

The Hydrans slowed, deployed fighters and advanced with them.

Now, as an aside I'll mention that, while fighters are very quick to accelerate and turn, they actually have a lower top speed than ships do.

That fact gave us a narrow window of time, while the Hydrans were advancing together with their fighters, where we could believably pull up to the StarBase and deploy, and yet not actually have to fight the Hydrans as we were pretending to get ready to do.

Well, after our leading elements took up position at range 2 from the base, some of the trailing elements took up position behind them, at range 1 from the base, and as they were doing so, we sprung our trap.

Our 2 D6M's fired their Maulers at full power. They gave it all they had and did 264 damage between them. At the same time, our ships fired Phasers at the StarBase - all that could aim at it anyway, since most of our ships were facing away from the base.

Still, that did 612 damage total.

Now a StarBase takes a lot of killing, but about 860 points should do it.

We exceeded that and it blew up without ever having a chance to return our fire.

Now they'd launched 36 fighters to help defend against the Hydran fleet, but each of those got 2 Plasma Torpedoes type F launched from short range.

They managed to fire some drones at us before they were destroyed, but we had no trouble shooting those down with our own drones.

So that fight was over in an eyeblink.

But Commodore Albrecht wasn't done.

Rear-Admiral, I should say, since we'd promoted him by this point, though one promotion didn't feel like quite enough for 2 such great victories, so we gave him a couple medals too, while teetering on the edge of promoting him again.

Anyway, he took 3rd fleet, and the Hydran fleet, and went rampaging in the Klingon rear areas, picking as many fights as he could and causing all kinds of chaos, confusion and damage.

While he was doing that, our Tugs had arrived well inside Klingon Territory, not far behind Third fleet, and had set up our 2 Mobile Bases, including full loads of fighters and Pseudo-Fighters, then carpeted the area around them with enough mines to boggle the imagination, plus some defense satellites for good measure, since there is nothing about those that requires them to orbit a planet.

That is, they work fine hanging stationary in space next to a base.

So when the Klingons finally gathered enough ships together to be a serious challenge to our fleets, both withdrew, as if fleeing.

But they fled right past the 2 mobile bases.

Now for normal use, we'd have some of the pods attached to a Mobile Base be repair pods and cargo pods, so it can do things that a base normally does.

But in this case they were all Federation Carrier pods.

So each base had 144 fighters, 54 PF's, and more mines and defense satellites than have ever been deployed in one place before.

Well, normally a Mobile Base isn't very tough.

Depending on what pods it has, a Heavy Cruiser can take one out.

So when the lead elements of the Klingon fleet saw our base, they didn't hesitate to attack.

We let the first few past our most distant mines, to lure more in.

See, we could do that, because our mines were command-controlled.

So they lost their forward group of 6 F5 frigates to explosive mines, at the same time as we had a large group of captor mines armed with Photon Torpedoes shoot down 2 D5 cruisers from a distance.

One damaged D5 cruiser got away.

So the next group of Klingons came in slowly, trying to avoid any mines.

Now if this group had been the full fleet which chased our fleets off, we'd have lost our Base, though it would have cost the Klingons very heavy losses to do so.

But ours was a team effort between our fleets and mobile bases.

Our 3rd fleet and the cooperating Hydran fleet, had passed by our Mobile Bases, letting the pursuing Klingon fleet think they would keep running towards the border.

So the Klingon fleet had slowed to deal with our Mobile Bases, and the thick minefields around those had slowed them even more, while they worked out how to get past those and take out our bases.

Well while the Klingons were distracted by the bases, third fleet and the Hydrans had gone back on the attack.

Each fleet used the ancient and time-honored tactic called the "horns of a dilemma", which is where you take a path that could threaten at least two viable targets. This leaves the enemy uncertain which to defend, so he has to split his forces to defend both.

If he doesn't, then you let that fact decide for you which target to attack - the undefended one.

So the Klingons had to split their fleet 6 ways - two to assault each of our Mobile Bases, and 4 to defend the targets our fleets might be attacking.

Now what had made the Klingon force overwhelming was the fact that, concentrated together, they could beat our concentrated fleets.

But with them now split up again, our fleets could seriously go on the offensive again - raiding any target that looked vulnerable, and staying away from any targets that were too well defended.

Meanwhile, the Klingons kept trying to destroy our Mobile Bases, since they realized that having them there is what enabled us to break pursuit when a Klingon force was too much for one of our fleets.

And they didn't want to charge a minefield with a lot of ships, since that'd just lose them a lot of ships.

So their second assault on our Mobile Bases was to have minesweepers come in slowly, sweeping mines as they came.

That'd work, if we didn't have so many fighters and PF's.

They lost those minesweepers quickly.

Then they sent more, escorted by a large number of their own fighters and PF's, which were dropped off by auxiliary carriers at a safe distance.

Now we've seen before that our fighters and PF's can beat theirs, often even two for one.

But this time, to preserve our resources, we didn't go for a straight-up fight, fighter to fighter.

Instead we hung back, as if hesitant, and drew them onto an area of captor mines.

Now the variety of Large Captor mine that fires Plasma F's, when controlled by a base, can fire its ammunition really quickly. And we favor that kind of mine and had planned out this kind of fight in advance.

So the area we chose to fight in had 40 of those mines, which fired 120 Plasma Torpedoes Type F, and took out 60 of the enemy PF's faster than you could believe.

Then our fighters and PF's closed in and fired their own Plasma Torpedoes- 54 from our PF's and 72 from our fighters, since only half of our fighters carried Plasma Torpedoes & the rest were Stinger-2's.

That took out 126 enemy fighters, and we finished off the other 6 with Phasers.

Of course they had fired drones at us, but none got through and hit us.

So we took almost no damage - just a little from the 6 Phasers they were able to fire. While the enemy lost a ton of PF's and fighters, plus the minesweepers they'd sent.

We reloaded the captor mines while we waited for the next attack, and moved them too, so the enemy wouldn't know where they were.

After that, the enemy tried a blockade, thinking to starve our bases into submission.

At first they started that closer in, so it didn't require as many ships.

But we prepared Scatter Packs and bombarded them with drones. They lost a D5 cruiser to that, and pulled their blockade further out.

That tied up a fair number of Klingon ships, and separated groups of them from each-other, making them vulnerable to ambush.

Well, we like ambushes - our ships are good at it.

So our Falcon Heavy Carrier, KingEagle, and Tug, which had all arrived at the front by now, started taking out small groups of 2-3 blockaders.

They'd uncloak behind a target, fire Plasma Torpedoes, vaporize the enemy, and recloak to go repeat the process nearby.

They took some shield damage as doomed ships shot at them. But it cost the Klingons a lot more than it cost us.

It only took repeating that process twice before the blockaders withdrew to try something else.

Then they gathered up all their blockaders and used them as an escort to protect a couple minelayers as they circled our bases, walling them off with their own mines – effectively blockading us with mines.

We let them do that and leave, since we knew what to do about that and didn't have enough ships right there and then to take out their escort without unacceptable losses.

Then, since they felt that they'd neutralized our bases, they were able to start gathering up their fleet again.

We couldn't allow that, so, as planned, we called in our tugs again to move our bases and start the whole game over again.

While they were coming, we collected our mines for re-use, and swept a path through theirs using those great new drones our WhizKids developed - the ones that use a modified Electronic Warfare pod to pretend to be a certain size class of ship.

Those just fly through the minefield and trigger the mines.

When they stop triggering mines, you know you have swept a clear path.

Now there are games you can play, with sensor mines, chain controlled mines, and complex triggering patterns, to destroy a minesweeper as it sweeps mines, and they had played them all, as we expected.

But that didn't really affect our method of sweeping mines via EW drone.

So we had a nice path through their blockading minefield when our tugs arrived, packed up our bases & moved them to other spots where they could support our fleets and annoy the Klingons.

Admiral Albrecht calls this aggressive use of defensive structures "Offensive Castling".

He is still running rampant in the Klingon rear areas like this.

When the Klingons gather, he splits them up with the "Horns of a dilemma" as he did before.

And when they spread out to defend, he ambushes groups of them.

This only works when you can go all offense & not worry about defense.

But the Hydrans are handling their own defense, so from Admiral Albrechts' perspective, he can indeed devote himself to offense, and keep forcing the enemy to respond to his actions, instead of vice-versa.

Well, his smaller combats and ambushes in this campaign are too many to detail. But we gave him another promotion for it.

While the Klingons are trying to deal with him, they have almost stopped any offensive action in Hydran Territory.

You may be wondering why the Klingons didn't just bring a whole lot of ships and crush our Mobile Bases.

They certainly have enough ships to do so.

But even they realize that they'd lose a lot of ships doing so, while we'd lose only fighters, PF's, mines, & pods.

Ships are expensive, while fighters, PF's, mines, & pods are all cheap.

So ask yourself, if you win a battle, but your losses in that battle amount to 30 times the cost of my losses in that battle, did you really win?

They knew the answer to that & so did not waste ships.

In other words, while we can't be too tough to beat, we can be too tough to be worth beating.

Now, while I am really proud of our guys, their strategies, and our ships, I don't want to give the impression that we can beat up the Klingon Empire, or anything close to it.

We are just the "straw that broke the camel's back" so to speak.

The Hydrans are almost equal to the Klingons deployed against them, but we make up the difference and tilt the balance.


	19. Chapter 19

Captain's Log, Stardate rocks throwing themselves at us.

Apparently the Klingons see us as a source of their problems & want to be rid of us. So, with their own fleets busy at the moment, they hired a Jindarian fleet to come bombard Oz and try to take it out.

Now the Jindarians call their fleets Caravans & they live, work, travel, and fight in them.

They build their ships in asteroids which they've mined all the more useful metals from.

What's more, they make sure their asteroid ships look like normal asteroids, and they've got a vast amount of experience in successfully hiding among regular asteroids.

Even if you know they are there, it is very hard to find them.

And if they know you are looking for them, they can hide for very long times - years even, since they grow all their own food and are otherwise self-contained in their asteroid ships.

While they are hiding, it is almost impossible to find them.

And that's what they were depending on here.

We'd set Oz in a spot where it could help defend the Hydran border from the Klingons, but since there is a wide selection of such spots, we'd chosen one with nearby asteroids we could mine.

We don't like to miss an opportunity to make money, and why have the base be idle when it could be busy making money?

Still, we recognized the possibility the asteroids could be used to sneak up on us, so we set the base a little way off from the edge of the asteroid field to give us a clear area to fight in if needed.

Range 20 had seemed about right.

Did I mention the Jindarians use a weapon called the Warp Augmented Railgun, which, at most ranges, does more damage than a Phaser 4 does?

Only a really massive ship - like one built into an asteroid, can mount the Warp Railguns, so it gives the Jindarians a significant advantage over regular ships.

Well, they waited until both of our Prospecting ships had full cargo holds and left the asteroid field to deliver their cargoes to Oz, then they snuck into the far edge of the field and began the slow sneaky maneuvers thru the field at which they are so good.

They wanted to be in position to fire without being discovered, and it worked.

The first thing we knew about their presence was when they fired.

And they had quite a few Railguns between their 11 ships.

Those were, by the way, 3 Heavy Carriers, 2 Heavy Cruisers, 2 Strike Carriers, and 4 Medium Strike Cruisers.

Now imagine you are near a large crowd of people, and a couple of them fire pistols at you as stealthily as they can.

Unless you happen to glimpse the pistol while it's out, you have no idea who fired or where they are.

Further imagine that this crowd of people all look the same, wear the same clothes, and do nothing to give away who among them fired.

And imagine that the shooters are skilled at shooting from the hip, so you have almost no chance to see the pistol.

Now you have an idea what it is like to be fired at by a Jindarian asteroid ship when that ship is hiding among plenty of normal asteroids.

Well in their first volley, they fired 20 Railguns, and hit us for 80 damage.

That left only 5 damage capacity left in the shield facing them.

But, even though we had not been expecting action, our crews are good & we were generally on alert, since we were in a danger zone at wartime, so we reacted quickly.

We fired back at our best guesses of where their ships were, but only hit and destroyed a few perfectly normal asteroids.

We got no hits on Jindarian asteroid ships.

And Stumpy was underway before Oz's docking bay doors had time to fully open. She got out between the partly-opened doors and started towing immediately.

So she was hooked up and towing us before the Jindarians could get off another volley.

Of course we had to drop our Positional Stabilizers in order to be towed, but that just takes a moment - it's turning them on, & getting the settings just right, calibrating them for the new position, that takes hours.

In process of towing us, Stumpy had turned us, so a fresh shield faced the Jindarians.

And now we were ready for the attack, so we dumped a lot of power into shield reinforcement.

Well, a StarBase has a lot of power, and ours has even more, since we have that 7th section on top. So we were able to reinforce the shield enough that it took no damage from their second volley.

Now the Jindarians knew that a moving base is a helpless base, in most cases.

Ours isn't, since our WhizKids had reprogrammed it so all the weapons but the Phaser 4's could still fire when the Positional Stabilizers are off.

But the Jindarians didn't know that.

What they did know is that they had 96 fighters plus a bunch of armed prospecting shuttles, and that we were likely to have no more than 36 fighters, since that's what StarBases normally top out at.

They also knew that we could get away if they didn't chase us, and that now was the best chance they were going to get to take us out.

They'd seen only Oz and Stumpy, and felt very confident of victory, so they launched all their fighters and prospecting shuttles to chase us, while their ships extricated themselves from the asteroid field to chase us as well.

Now, a StarBase has enclosed docking bays - think of a really big sphere into which several whole ships can go and dock.

And when Stumpy left the enclosure, she wasn't the only one who did.

Sure, the Jindarians only saw Stumpy, but that's because we took the semi-risky move of having other ships cloak themselves while in the docking bay, and stay cloaked while moving out.

So we actually had more ships present than the Jindarians knew about, and our ships were moving towards the asteroid field, to be ready when the Jindarians left it.

So their fighters, on the way to attack Oz, actually passed by our cloaked ships and never knew it.

Now their ships were not too hard to detect from close range as they maneuvered around normal asteroids to get clear of the field.

Normal asteroids don't move like that.

So our ships were ready and waiting in position as the Jindarians left the asteroid field.

And Stumpy had not run away as fast with Oz as she could have.

That's because we wanted them to fire their Railguns at us again, instead of our ships, which they could have easily gutted.

Well, that worked - they shot their railguns at Oz once more, which we once more absorbed with shield reinforcement.

Then we de-cloaked our motley assembly of the miscellaneous ships we'd had on hand.

They de-cloaked right on top of the 11 Jindarian ships that were just emerging from the asteroid field, and immediately docked and boarded.

All of them took some shield damage from Phaser fire, but nothing serious.

Now, what we had launched was those 5 Lyran ships we'd captured in their StarBase, plus some newly built ships including two Kzinti-style Light Carriers, a new KingEagle, and a new Falcon Heavy Carrier.

The Kzinti style CVL, which we'd used for assaulting a Klingon Battlestation, was back, along with the 3 monitors, and we launched them all too.

But the monitors, still using their old small engines while we work on bigger ones, were too slow to able to get to the Jindarians in time.

So we had 10 ships de-cloak next to their 11.

But one of our Lyran Battlecruisers was able to attach Tractor Beams, and pull in, and dock to, two of their Medium Strike Cruisers.

None of our ships had their crews fully up to speed yet. But their training was complete enough for moving around under cloak and docking, which was all they needed to do in this case.

And their Boarding Parties included many on loan from Oz, so they were, overall, very capable.

Now boarding Jindarians is risky for a couple reasons.

They put traps in some of their old unused mining tunnels, and each ship varies in how they use some of the caverns left by mining out minerals.

Some of them fill that space with barracks & so actually have enough boarding parties for a good fight.

But we knew all of that, so our ships had scanned theirs prior to docking, which gave our troops good maps and helped them avoid unused areas.

And we'd brought all the boarding parties we could cram in for the very short trip from Oz to the Jindarian caravan.

So taking their ships went without any problem.

In the meantime, before de-cloaking but after the Jindarians were committed, and in time to be ready to fire at the Jindarian fighters, we launched our own fighters and PF's.

So, while they had 96 fighters and 24 prospecting shuttles, which can act in some ways as fighters if they get in really close, we had 144 fighters and 66 PF's just from Oz alone, with another 90 fighters and 54 PF's among our ships.

So our 110 PF's closed to range 11 with the Jindarian fighters, fired Torpedoes & withdrew.

That's beyond their maximum range, so the Jindarian fighters could not even fire back at us, while our Torpedoes would cripple each fighter they hit, even after having their warheads reduced by defensive fire.

Well the Jindarians gave it their best shot, but still took a lot of damage.

And when our PF's turned to launch another wave of Plasma Torpedoes, the Jindarians surprised us by surrendering.

Not that that should be a surprise, but for the most part we've either been facing folks who won't surrender, or the battle is over to fast for that to happen.

So we had them all eject from their shuttles and fighters to make sure they could pull no tricks, then went around and collected them all.

Of course, for such a successful battle, I gave myself a promotion, from Trader Joe, to Trader Joe First Class - nah, just kidding.

Anyway, their crews fall under the piracy laws, not the prisoner of war laws, so we could ransom them, but to who?

Jindaran caravans are independent, so no other caravan was likely to pay to get these Jindarans freed.

And it's expensive to keep them locked up as prisoners.

We don't want that & neither do they.

But we found a solution.

See, each side had something the other side wanted & that is always a great start towards making a trade.

They wanted their freedom, and we were really impressed with their ships & wanted to learn how to make those.

They build all their own stuff, from ships to weapons and control systems, and do it all just with what they get from mining asteroids, for the most part.

That's valuable.

So, in exchange for all their plans & schematics for how to build ships, fighters, fabrication plants, railguns etc, we gave them a chance to start over.

So, nearby, though in Klingon Territory, since the Hydrans didn't want troublemakers around, we set them up in an asteroid field.

After negotiations, the price we settled on for the plans etc was 3 habitation domes, each on its own asteroid and with it's own prospecting pod, complete with prospecting shuttles, and two small prospecting ships.

Given that and time, they'll be able to rebuild everything.

We're not worried about them coming after us again, since it'll take a fair amount of time for them to get a bunch of ships built again, and in the meantime, they'll need to keep a low profile to avoid any problems from the Klingons.

It helps that they are philosophical about having lost - and just want a chance to start over.

And they have that, while we have some very interesting plans.

We plan to start building Planetary Defense Batteries using Railguns as soon as possible. They can be mounted on asteroids near the base and provide a significant defense boost.

One other thing we got with the ships was a lot of fungus - it's what the Jindarians eat, and they grow it in their ships.

Apparently it can grow anywhere & live on almost anything.

That sounds like a cash crop to me.

So we had various races try it, after testing it for safety of course.

Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Andorians, Rigellians, Humans and several others all hate it.

Kzinti like it about as well as Humans like cabbage - there are uses for it, and some fans of it, but overall they aren't wild about it.

But Gorns love it.

To them, it fills the same niche as cheese does for Humans: it can go on or with anything, adds a desirable flavor and texture, and was immediately popular.

So of course we'll be setting up trade routes for selling that, while growing as much as we can.

The Gorns are great to trade with - their government breaks its own laws only very rarely, and they are generally trustworthy and reliable.

You don't have to worry about Gorn captains going rogue and attacking things because they got bored.

That's why we don't normally trade with them much - our niche is to go where no trader had dared to go before - dangerous places where attack is likely.

Captain's Log, Stardate death by grapes

So the Habitation spheres we left at Ringer got to spring a nasty surprise on a Klingon Flotilla.

While Ringer is a minor enough planet to not attract much Klingon attention, it got some today.

We don't know whether this is a new order from higher up the Klingon chain of command - to try to raid Hydran territory more often, or whether a flotilla captain got bored.

Either way, a Klingon F5L and 2 F5's showed up and advanced on the planet intent on mayhem.

They apparently had not run into any of our Habitation Spheres before.

We let them get to range 13, then Apple, Orange, Concorde, and Muscadine each fired 4 Phaser 4's - a little more between them than a StarBase has.

They all coordinated on the F5L and turned it into a drifting hulk in one hit.

Then each launched 6 drones too, as well as 6 PF's.

Well each of the F5's shot down 5 of the 12 drones aimed at it, then exploded when the remaining 7 hit.

Our PF's didn't have anything to do but tow the F5L back to see if it can be repaired.

It can, and we will, once we pick up the 4 habs again after the fighting is over.

And, if you saw only what was happening in Hydran territory, you'd think the Klingon fighting was over...or nearly so.

There's a lot of fighting inside Klingon territory, but while the ships are busy there, they're not busy elsewhere.

In other news, our captured Jindarian ships are already up and running...sort-of.

See, we are constantly training crews, and we teach them the general stuff first.

So they know, Navigation, or Engine Maintenance, for example, before they learn any specific details about the ship they will be crewing.

Often we don't know what ship they will be crewing when we start training them.

So we have nobody trained in how to operate these specific Jindarian ships, but we have some folks trained in general for how to be a ships crew.

So we put some of them aboard the Jindarian ships and set them to work.

See, partially trained crew like that would be a disaster in combat.

But Jindarian ships, while very good at combat, are much more than combat ships.

Each is fully fitted out as an asteroid mining platform, as well as a manufacturing ship, a food growing ship, a place to live, and a place to train new crews.

So we figured that our partially trained crews could complete their training in these ships while the ships sit immobile in a nearby asteroid field keeping busy at mining and manufacturing.

And this is interesting:

For a while now, we've been selling habitation spheres, and many of our sales are to folks who want to live in visually dramatic places.

Nebulae are the most popular choices for that kind of thing, and there's a cluster of 3 very spectacular nebulae right by the WYN star cluster.

That's in what we've been calling Area 2, where our new Battlestation named Narnia is already partially up and functioning.

Anyway, there are quite a few Habitation Spheres around those 3 nebulae, and we just got a call from them.

It seems they have formed a union, of sorts, and would like to contract with us for protection. Now we already had contracts with a number of them, but this will expand it a good deal.

They're calling themselves the Sightseers Club and they'd like us to establish regular patrols of all of them, plus leave some ships on guard permanently, as well as assign a few tugs to move the Habs around from time to time, so their view changes.

They don't want to get tired of looking at the same old thing, and they imagine that even a spectacular nebula might get boring over time.

But they figure that if they move to a different vantage point from time to time, then things should stay interesting indefinitely.

Anyway, we're happy to contract with them.

We haven't got as many ships to spare as they want right now, but we will soon and that will be part of the negotiations.

Of course, having been given the idea for free, we'll be offering this kind of service to others as well.

Moving habs is easy, and if one gets tired of, say, a gas giant, and wants to move to a planet's ring system, we'll be happy to oblige.

The Sightseers Club area happens to have some interesting asteroid fields nearby, so maybe that'd be a good place for our new Jindarian ships, once they get up to speed - we could mine and guard at the same time.

Captain's Log, Stardate Well that was fast

Well color me surprised - the Klingons have called a peace conference!

Apparently having their own territory raided is not what they signed up for. They figured it'd be cheap victories in company with the Lyrans, as it has been before.

They want us out of their territory, and the Hydran war ended, so they can get back to restoring order among their subject races in their own empire.

Now while I feel for anybody who is subject to the Klingons, there's no practical way we can help them.

The Hydrans are not interested in foreign adventures, so we'd have to take on the entire Klingon Empire by ourselves, and that's just way beyond our scale.

Even as strong as we've grown, they have more than 10 times as many ships as we do.

To even attempt it would bankrupt us in no time, as well as probably getting all our crews and workers to quit.

And lesser forms of helping, like smuggling weapons in to the slaves' planets, would just drag out the fight and make more of them die - they can't stand up to the Klingon Empire any more than we can, and that won't change with a few shiploads of weapons.

So, we'll be leaving that question alone and going to a peace conference soon.

It's in the neutral zone between the Hydrans and Klingons.

That will be a new experience.

Among other things, our being invited means, in a way, that the Klingons now recognize us as a nation like the Federation, Kzinti, Gorns, and Hydrans have.

We're already working on what treaties we'd like to have with them.

Free trade, mostly, but also anything else we'd need to support that.


	20. Chapter 20

Captain's Log, Stardate So this is Peace?

So the peace conference with the Klingons is a big enough deal that I couldn't think of anything else to put in this Log in the meantime.

And it didn't take long anyway - the Klingons are in a hurry and aren't interested in delays.

And when their Emperor decides he wants something, there isn't a legislative body to debate it, so they can move really fast when they want to.

The Lyrans didn't come – they don't do peace treaties with the Hydrans, though the more or less constant state of war they have does vary greatly in degrees – sometimes the Lyrans are attacking and trying to gain territory, while more often they just do a little casual raiding.

So, anyway, we all showed up at the meeting spot in the Neutral zone, each with their own fleet.

See, neither side trusted the other at all, so the approach that is often tried - to come to a neutral place without weapons, just wouldn't work.

So instead of spending a lot of futile effort trying to make sure nobody was armed, we simply acknowledged reality and accepted that everybody would be armed no matter what was agreed.

So everybody brought as much armaments as they could, and did so openly.

That set the tone for why were there in the first place - demonstrating, by having lots of ships present, that we could each do vast amounts of damage to each other, and thereby reminding us that we were tired of that & wanted to try something else.

So of course we of Trader Joes brought everything we could scrape together - all of third and fourth fleets, plus all the ships that weren't yet ready but could fly, as well as any ships first and second fleets could spare.

See, the fleets have contracts that specify certain force levels will be maintained for certain amounts of time, but there are clauses in there to cover moving ships off for repairs, changing one ship for another and certain other exceptions.

Using those, we could spare a few ships for a short while and still meet our contracts.

And things have been quiet in the LDR anyway - the Andromedans have been hard to track down and bring to battle since we found and destroyed so many of their bases.

So anyway, the Hydrans and Klingons had each brought large fleets to the conference as well, and nobody pretended that any ship, base, planet, or pod could be made safe from treachery, so we all negotiated from our flagships.

Negotiating with an Emperor is weird - they mostly don't negotiate. They're used to making absolute decrees and demands, and it shows.

And the Hydrans are used to being the underdog, so they are automatically cowed by the Klingons.

I'd like to say that we, with our tremendous skill and experience in negotiating deals, made all the difference.

But both sides sort of saw us the same way that two adults at the dinner table see a child who keeps trying to hijack the conversation.

So while we were invited, they basically made the same deal between them that they'd have made if we weren't there.

They are going to cease hostilities and go back to the pre-war borders, and that's about it.

Sure, the Hydrans got some concessions from the Klingons about various disputes, but for the most part they are returning to the status-quo.

But there was a really odd turn of events after that.

When it was basically a done deal, yet before the approved representatives beamed aboard to sign official documents, the Klingon Emperor made an additional demand.

He demanded satisfaction.

From us.

Specifically from Admiral Albrecht in his flagship, the C8V named Shiny.

See, apparently, the Emperor's cousin had been in command of the Klingon StarBase that Admiral Albrecht had taken out, and the Emperor was upset about it.

He said we had slighted his honor and that needed to be fixed, by personal combat, before he could sign any peace deal.

He wanted to have his flagship, commanded by him, fight Fred Albrecht in TJSN Shiny.

Well, here is where our negotiating skills came into play.

We mostly played on the differences between ships - that the Emperor's C9 dreadnought was not a fair fight for a C8V, since the conversion of a C8 dreadnought to a carrier involves removing some weapons to make room for fighters, which there was no way that he'd let us bring, since, if we had our fighters, the fight would be over before it started.

We also pointed out that we had no reason to accept his challenge - that it was a personal thing for him which didn't motivate us at all.

And the Hydrans backed us. They thought it was a simple execution and they wouldn't stand by and let their friends be killed like that.

But the Emperor really wanted to fight us.

And everyone wanted the war to end.

And Admiral Albrecht was confident he would win, though we didn't let that show while negotiating.

So we managed to 'sweeten the deal' as the saying goes.

We have a lot of faith in Admiral Albrecht and Shiny, and he was completely willing to do the fight, and very reassuring in his confidence of victory.

But we had to privately tell the Hydrans that we really thought we could win, so they'd stop protecting us from having to fight.

So we got the Klingons to agree to 3 treaties, which we really wanted.

They were a lot to ask for, and they agreed only on condition that we'd get them only if we won the fight.

Of course they were expecting to win & then sign the plain peace treaty without having to give us our 3 treaties.

They had great confidence in the Emperor's ship, among other reasons, because it has plenty of upgrades no other C9 does, as well as the best crew in their Empire.

Anyway, our treaties were basically this - the right for Trader Joe's ships, including warships escorting armed cargo ships, to travel freely in the Klingon Empire.

And for those same ships to trade where they wanted to in that empire, and to defend themselves if attacked.

With those, we could make a lot of money trading in Klingon Territory.

That made the fight worth doing.

Then the Emperor added conditions.

He wanted to make sure we couldn't cloak or use mines.

That's asking a lot, and he knew that, since he had the reports of how our ships had been fighting.

But Fred Albrecht told us he didn't need those and would still win, so we negotiated it.

Since they asked a lot, so did we - we bargained for Diplomatic Immunity from Klingon laws, so that, if any of our ships or crew were accused of any crime, it would be handled by diplomatic negotiations between nations, not by their local police.

Now it wasn't that we wanted to or planned to commit crimes, but that their police use spurious criminal charges as a way to bully folks and extract bribes. I know – most governments do that. My point is that the Klingons do it a lot more than most.

Now you can, sometimes, get some temporary advantage from criminal behavior, but it always gets found out sooner or later.

And crimes are absolutely deadly to trust, which is absolutely crucial to successful trading.

So while some choose to try for temporary advantage by betraying trust, that's coupled to long-term disadvantage & just not worth it.

And we plan to keep trading long-term, so committing crimes has no appeal.

But avoiding oppression by the corrupt Klingon police was definitely worth a lot to us. So we negotiated hard for that.

Again, the Klingons made it dependent on us wining the fight, and we agreed.

They, being Klingons, came right out and said we were stupid, since the conditions made it a lot less likely we'd win and if we lost we got nothing, per the terms of the agreement.

We just smiled and got it all in writing, suitably witnessed, copied, and logged.

Calling them names would have risked the sweet deal we were looking at.

And letting them think we were foolish just got us a better deal - one they'd never have agreed to if we'd bragged about our chances and successfully gotten them concerned that perhaps we might win.

So the fight was agreed on.

We got the trading terms we wanted, but we couldn't have everything – we ended up with some unfavorable terms for the fight itself.

But treaties for trading were more important to us than the terms for the fight, since we expected we could win the fight anyway, even with the unfavorable terms.

So the fight was to be without fighters or PF's, and begin at speed 0, range 40, and Weapon Status 0, which means that no weapons can be charged at all, nor any other form of loading or preparing either done or begun, except for drone racks, which are always kept full.

And this was to be verified by the simplest of tests – no inspections or trust involved.

Simply this – if you fire anything sooner than you could have armed it from scratch, you are deemed to be in breach of the rules & so forfeit the fight, and your ship.

Well, that left out our various tricks with scatter packs and Stasis boxes for the Plasma Torpedo Launchers, but only to start with – once enough time passed for us to charge Plasma Torpedoes from scratch (that being the slowest operation these ships do), it was anything goes.

If any other ships, fighters, PF's etc interfere, then it's immediately back to war.

Since the Klingons are the ones who would cheat if anyone did, and since they are the ones who got tired of this war and called the peace conference in the first place, that kind of interference seems pretty unlikely.

Why are these terms unfavorable?

The range is actually in our favor – something we argued for to buy us time.

Mainly the disadvantage is from the Weapon Status zero, because the Klingons can fire immediately, since Disruptors take no preparation time at all.

They'll get 3 volleys out of their Disruptors before we get to fire Plasma Torpedoes.

And not only do they know that, but it also gives them plenty of time to prepare Wild Weasels, which, if used well, could easily counteract our entire first volley of Plasma Torpedoes, resulting in us waiting out 3 more volleys of Disruptors before we can hope to get off an effective volley of Torpedoes.

So our own heavy weapons will likely be completely ineffective until the enemy has fired 6 volleys of their heavy weapons at us.

They have more Phasers too, and those also will get to shoot us 6 times before we really get to use our great equalizer – our Plasma Torpedoes.

And that's assuming we do our best to stagger Plasma Torpedo launches to use up all their shuttles, so they run out of them and can't use any more Wild Weasels.

If we misjudge how best to do that, then they may accept a minor Plasma hit in order to save themselves from a major Plasma volley later.

So we're putting a lot of trust in Admiral Albrecht here.

But he deserves it, and we're confident about the outcome – almost as confident as the Klingons are.

They seem absolutely certain that they'll win.

But war is risk, and certainty is almost always misplaced.

Underestimating your chances and thereby being motivated to try harder, is almost always better than overconfidence and the slacking off and mistakes it invites.

All 3 fleets - Klingon, Hydran, and TJSN would spectate the fight while also standing ready to go to war in case of cheating.

And probably every ship there was recording everything.

We also had an agreement that we'd discuss and review any accusations of cheating before restarting the war, so any simple misunderstandings would not become major problems.

Then we each had our starting positions to go to and a countdown to begin.

The Klingon dreadnought raced to its starting position, which seemed a little odd to me, but gave Admiral Albrecht a knowing smile while he gave new orders to his crew.

He's like a chessmaster - able to think half a dozen moves ahead of most opponents and guess whet they are thinking.

I forgot to mention that the Emperor's C9 dreadnought was named the Devastating and Mighty Fist of the Conqueror. Our guys just called it DamFoc and snickered as they said it, demonstrating that if you brag, you just invite ridicule.

They have another ship named Swift Crimson Blade of the Silent Night Stalker, and both really just translate to "I'm impressed with myself".

But I say if you're impressive, show us, don't bore us.

If you actually do impressive things, you don't need to yammer on and on about how impressive you are - it's evident for all to see.

But I digress.

At the agreed signal, the fight started.

It was immediately plain why the Klingons had agreed to start at range 40, and why they had raced to the start line.

For the DamFoc, they had apparently bought or stolen an upgrade from Federation Technology called the Positron Flywheel.

That's a system where you can accelerate, not just according to how fast you're going now, but according to how fast you've been going recently.

So even though, from a dead stop, ships can't accelerate to more than speed 10 all at once, the DamFoc surged forwards, hitting speed 26 from a dead stop in no time flat.

As an aside, just as with range standards and damage standards, just about everybody has adopted a simpler system of reference for speeds. So instead of saying 30,000 kilometers, we say range 3, and we drop any complicated talk of megajoules in favor of simply saying "4 damage", it's the same way with speed.

Instead of saying "He accelerated to Warp 2.96 forwards while we surprised him by going Warp 2.15 backwards", we just say he went speed 26 forwards and we went speed 10 backwards.

You can't really fight at speeds faster than Warp 3.1, so this system avoids the constant use of long confusing decimals.

Plus this system correlates range and speed really well - if he goes speed 26 and we don't move, then he is closer to us by range 26 in the time it takes to load and fire a Phaser.

Anyway, he went forwards at speed 26 while we backed up at speed 10.

That kept our forwards firing weapons and thicker front shield towards him. And from a dead stop, there is no downside to going backwards like that.

As he came, he fired drones, but held on to his Disruptors and Phasers.

See, in a big ship like that, going speeds like that, budgeting your energy is important, and wasting a bunch of energy on long-range shots when you can expect they won't even get through his shield reinforcement, is a bad idea.

But his drone numbers surprised us - he mounted 12 drone launchers: triple the number a C9 normally has.

Now, since the Klingon had wasted no time in firing, Admiral Albrecht could see what he had and adjust his own actions accordingly.

So we fired only 3 drones, which mirved and took out 9 of the enemy's drones.

Their remaining 3 also mirved, but by the time they could get to us, we had our Gatling Phasers loaded and ready, so we shot them down easily.

Now we could have fired all 9 drone launchers, but Admiral Albrecht recognized that with the timings and ranges as they were, he couldn't get a hit in.

So he held back, to surprise and overwhelm the Klingon later.

Well, the DamFoc and TJSN Shiny both sped up, to 31 and 20 respectively and the range closed to 13.

The very same drone exchange occurred a second time, with the Klingon hoping to use up our drone ammunition, and keep our energy and Phasers occupied.

We found out later that he had Type B drone racks, which have 6 shots each before needing reloading instead of the 4 shots all other types of racks have.

Anyway, they also shot 16 Phaser 1's and 8 Disruptors at us, but at that range they only did 32 damage to us, burning through our shield reinforcement and reducing the strength of our front shield by 13 points - from 49 down to 36.

Now that's a lot more firepower than any other C9 has, and they clearly had energy upgrades as well, so they could actually arm and fire all those weapons while moving fast.

If they'd shot the same broadside at us at range 1 they could have expected 118 damage on average, and 33 more if they overloaded their Disruptors.

That much damage would have burned up our front shield and then gone about half of the way to blowing up Shiny.

And they'd be able to fire again by the time we could fire Torpedoes.

We did fire our 6 Phaser 1's, and did only 7 damage to his front shield.

And we launched all 7 of our shuttles as scatter packs, though each was only 2/3 loaded with drones, since we didn't have time to fully load them and still have them out and ready when needed.

But now as we were about ready to fire Torpedoes, both sides did some rapid speed changes - the Klingon covered another 10 range units, then suddenly slowed to speed 4, which is the maximum speed they can go without voiding the Wild Weasels they had to start using.

And we covered 5 range units backwards at the same time, before slowing to a stop so we could use all our energy for other things.

And the fight got complicated really quickly.

We did a third drone exchange as before, and they fired Phasers and Disruptors again, but they had to fire them before they'd have liked to - if they waited any longer then they'd have voided the Wild Weasels which they needed to stay safe from our Plasma Torpedoes, which Admiral Albrecht had started firing waves of.

Well, this time they did 31 damage to our shield, leaving it with only enough remaining capacity to stop 5 more damage.

But then our Torpedoes started arriving, forcing the C9 so sit quiet so they could use Wild Weasels.

Now Fred Albrecht sent groups of Torpedoes just large enough to force the use of a Wild Weasel, and staggered those groups so no single Wild Weasel would defeat too many Torpedoes.

He knew the C9 dreadnought carries only 4 shuttles, and he wanted to use those up and still have enough Torpedoes left to ruin the DamFoc.

And he threw in all our Pseudo Plasma Torpedoes - the decoys that look and act like Plasma Torpedoes, since there was no better time than the present.

He started with a Plasma Torpedo Type R, and a Type G, totaling 70 potential damage between them, then did that same mix again, then followed with a group of two Type S Torpedoes and a Type G, with 80 damage potential between them, then repeated that group.

Now fully half of those Torpedoes were just decoys, and I won't go into the truly twisted logic and predictions that dictated the choices for which were real and which were fake, since in the event, it didn't matter - the Klingons used all 4 of their shuttles on Wild Weasels & so defeated each of the 4 groups of Torpedoes.

And that was exactly what Admiral Albrecht had planned on, so then he launched our 5 Plasma Torpedoes Type F from our Stasis boxes.

These could do 100 damage between them and knock down the enemy's shield, then wreck about a third of his ship.

But they didn't get through.

Apparently the DamFoc had upgrades not just to its power systems, weapons, shields, & speed, but also to the number of shuttles it carried.

They sent out a 5th Wild Weasel and stopped our wave of Type F Torpedoes too.

And then we saw why Fred Albrecht had launched Scatterpacks and not used them yet.

Those fired 4 drones each, which mirved into 84 dogfight drones, with the potential for 168 damage between them.

The DamFoc negated those with a 6th Wild Weasel.

The C9's Disruptors came online again and he shot us for 32 damage. But 29 of that got absorbed by our shield reinforcement, leaving our shield at 4 remaining capacity.

When dreadnoughts aren't spending energy on movement, they can reinforce their shields pretty significantly.

And then we saw why our illustrious Admiral had held back most of his drone launchers and pretended to have fewer than he really did.

Our 9 Drone launchers fired 3 single-spaced drones and 6 double-spaced drones, which mirved into 39 little drones.

That may sound like an odd mix, but it's what we could do after the drone duel we had been fighting.

Anyway, now we hit paydirt - the DamFoc had to use Phasers to shoot down 32 of these drones, which indicated he was out of Wild Weasels.

Whether he was permanently out, or out just until he charged another one, up didn't matter - Fred Albrecht didn't give him the time to make it matter.

First we fired the last of our drones from the shipboard launchers - 3 more regular and 3 more double-size drones.

They mirved into 24 little drones, of which the enemy shot down zero - he'd fired too recently to be able to fire again yet.

So he took 48 damage from these.

That, on top of the 14 damage he'd taken from the previous wave of drones knocked down his shield reinforcement, his front shield, and actually did 3 points of internal damage.

Now at this point, it looked like we had taken our best shot and barely nicked the enemy, while he was about to pound us mercilessly at close range while we tried in vain to recharge our Torpedoes, reload our drone racks, and recover and reload our shuttles, before we died - all this while having only a few Phasers to tickle the enemy with while we died.

I said it looked like that.

I meant to an outside observer who didn't know better.

To us it looked like victory.

We put the DamFoc in Stasis with our Stasis Field Generator.

It amazes me how wily Admiral Albrecht is - that among all the other things he had to do - all the timing and coordination and calculation and everything, he also tricked the enemy into getting in range of our SFG, and doing it right when it mattered most - when it'd give us a chance to reload everything & then catch the enemy completely vulnerable when he was released from stasis.

So we held the DamFoc in Stasis only about half as long as we could have, but that was plenty of time.

We recovered all our shuttles, reloaded them as scatter packs and relaunched them.

We reloaded our drone racks.

And we not only recharged our main Plasma Torpedo batteries, but also reloaded the Stasis boxes with Type F Torpedoes.

Plus we repaired our front shield a little.

Then we were ready to release the enemy ship.

But before we get to that I will point out what else we did.

From the DamFoc's perspective, no time will have passed - they will see us fire full loads of everything right after having done so.

Now they may take that as a sign of cheating and give precipitous orders which all would regret.

So we took precautions.

We called the rest of the Klingon fleet and got them to acknowledge, while being recorded, that this was a simple SFG & fair by the rules of the fight.

We also warned them that our fleets would be moving harmlessly, then moved the Hydran and TJSN fleets to spell out the message "You were in Stasis via SFG" in a way that would be visually obvious to the DamFoc.

Then we spelled the same thing, using flares right in front of them.

Then we let them out and fired 42 drones and 5 Plasma Torpedoes, with 654 potential damage between them, at the DamFoc.

That was enough, in his current state, to vaporize him 4 times over.

And we knew that he couldn't fire again or use another Wild Weasel, even if he had a shuttle left, before it all hit.

Though just in case we kept back our ship's drone launchers and Type F Torpedoes for another wave if needed.

Well nobody wants to die.

We'd made our point and clearly won the fight.

So before he got vaporized, the Klingon dreadnought surrendered - using all 3 of the ways previously agreed to.

Apparently he wanted to make sure there was no mistake nor delay.

I can understand why.

After he surrendered, we dropped our Lock-On to his ship, which made all our drones and Torpedoes wander off harmlessly.

And with that, the fight was over.

They signed the treaties, including our 4, without saying much, then left.

Apparently they were embarrassed at having been beaten and wanted to go sulk.

But we got our treaties and we expect they will be quite useful.

Now many empires would just repudiate the treaties and ignore them - especially 'bad guy' empires like the Klingons, who typically follow only the rules which they find convenient.

But in this case we'd tied the treaties to the personal honor of the Emperor.

And one thing the Klingons are reliable about is their own honor - as long as the Emperor thinks it will make him look bad to renege on the treaties, he won't.

Of course that doesn't mean that, at some point, he can't decide that something outweighs looking bad, then go ahead and cancel the treaties.

But he won't do that lightly.

And by trading well, so that prosperity increases for both sides, we make it far less likely that he'll cancel the treaties – nobody wants to cut their own income to spite others.

Still, we will wait a while before we start trading with them, to give the news of our treaties time to get around and tempers time to cool off.

In other good news - even though the fighting is over on the Klingon front, and will probably slow to a near-stop on the Lyran front now that they haven't got Klingon support, the Hydrans want to continue their contracts with First and Second fleets.

They want to keep both around helping protect them long term, since those fleets made so much difference, and also because the Hydrans have been attacked so often over time, they figure it's only a matter of time until the next war, and they want to be ready for it.

That works for us.


	21. Chapter 21

Captain's Log, Stardate Almost there

So as part of the peace treaty with the Klingons, we pulled our fleets and bases out of their territory.

Most of our ships, plus our mobile bases, are headed down towards the Lyran border, since there is still fighting there.

The Lyrans, as I said, never do peace treaties with the Hydrans - their version of peace is to settle down to mere sporadic raiding.

Well, we hope to help with that too - not just by defending, but by a more active policy.

We've announced to them a policy we are calling the Peace of Trader Joe's.

It amounts to this - every time they raid, they can expect at least one raid in return.

And they have experience with our raids.

So we hope they will find it motivational.

We'll have to wait and see though - they don't respond to announcements of that type.

Anyway Oz is back on its way to Area 1, and will be there soon.

In preparation for our arrival, we've set up both of our Mobile Bases next to where we plan to set Oz. That gives us some security for our arrival, and also gets trade going.

Now Hydran commercial ships don't want to go into Lyran territory, and vice-versa.

It wouldn't be safe for them.

But they are both willing to go into the Neutral zone and trade with us. So we become a middle-man and make it all work.

And both sides, plus the LDR and the Klingons, who will do the same kind of trading, have lots of potential to trade with each-other.

So things are looking good there.

Now we are taking precautions against sneakiness, such as the sneakiness we did with Bleriot taking the Lyran Starbase, or of other kinds, like docking a robot ship filled with explosives and detonating them.

So, for example, nobody docks with a base of ours without first docking with a shuttle.

That shuttle has inspectors, to make sure there are no nasty surprises, and also a pilot to steer the ship in the last little way.

That used to be common in ancient times when ships traveled on water. The local pilot knew the local conditions, sandbars, currents and so forth, and could get the ship docked safely where someone without that local familiarity might not.

And in our case, we know our traffic patterns and other things that will keep traffic moving quickly and safely.

And we also know that our pilots are reliable - for instance, none of them will get angry and ram another ship.

We don't necessarily know that about, say, Lyran or Klingon ship captains.

Now after our tugs set up the Mobile Bases, we had them try something.

All of them went into the nearby dust cloud which hides a star system. I've mentioned it before - the dust damages your shields as you pass through, but more importantly it hides the whole star system, which could therefore become a nest of pirates.

So we want at least some Defense Satellites there, to keep any pirates from setting up in the first place.

Well, our Habs - Apple, Orange, Concorde and Muscadine, also need some place to go.

So maybe that system would be a good place - it is very near Oz, and in the Neutral Zone so it's fair game.

But it isn't on the front lines if fighting starts again - mainly due to that dust cloud and the fact that everybody knows it is a worthless system.

Now both the Lyrans and Hydrans are aware of that star system - they've long since checked it out and noted it has no habitable planets.

But we had an idea that maybe we could make a planet habitable.

See, an orbit is just a combination of two vectors (a vector is just speed plus direction) - the vector of the planet going sideways, and the vector of its star pulling it in.

When those 2 vectors balance, the planet always falls towards the star, as demanded by gravity, but also moves sideways fast enough that it never hits the star - just circles it.

That's the simple form anyway.

So we thought if one Tug can tow an asteroid, and do it very quickly, even if it's a fairly big asteroid, maybe a bunch of tugs could tow a planet.

I don't mean drag it around casually like a little red wagon.

I mean can they pull on it hard enough to change one of those vectors a little, even if it takes months of continuous pulling.

See, if you slow down the sideways vector, then the planet will 'fall' in towards the star a little until a new equilibrium is achieved.

And if you speed up the sideways vector a little, then the planet will behave similarly and enter a new orbit further from the sun.

Now the star system I'm talking about, which we've named Switzerland, has no planets in the habitable zones.

For Humans and most other races, that's the ring around the star where water is liquid, rather than frozen or steam.

For Hydrans, it's the zone where Methane is a gas, but the system doesn't have any planets in that zone either.

But it has several planets in the wrong orbits, including a couple planets of about the right sizes in orbits that are close to what they need to be - only an AU (Astrononical Unit - about 93 million miles) off from where we need them to be.

So it's all nice theory and stuff, but you never really know until you try.

We have a dozen tugs online & only kept back one to keep towing Oz to the finish line, so to speak.

We have 2 more, but they are still being repaired, having their security interlocks broken, and new crews trained.

Anyway, the 11 tugs went and tried it, carefully at first, then at full power when they could see it was working.

It turns out it is better to push than to pull.

When you're pulling a planet, the tractor beam tends to tear off chunks of rock and send your ship flying away temporarily out of control.

We didn't have any losses from that, but it was a wild ride, briefly.

But when pushing the planet, at worst, the place where the tractor beam touches, compacts pretty tightly, but you can still push just fine.

So we're actually changing the orbit of a planet, slowly.

Calculations show it will take all 11 tugs 24.2 days, using continuous pushing at maximum power to put it in the right orbit.

Then we'll have the tugs move comets to intercept the planet and give it a new atmosphere and hydrosphere.

While they are there towing comets, the Tugs can make sure the planet's orbit stays stable, and correct any wobbles that may develop.

Then, assuming that works, we'll do 2 more in the same system - one for us the Hydrans, and one more for us.

In some systems we could possibly do even more, but that's how many look good for towing in this system.

That'll tie up our tugs for a while, but is a good long-term investment.

For a while at least, we'll have other ships take on the convoy and patrol duties the tugs were going to do.

And we're building more tugs, in addition to the 2 we're repairing.

This could even be a new business for us - towing planets around to make more habitable worlds. There's always demand for more living space, and while our Habitation Spheres are nice, not everybody wants to live like that - some just prefer planets.

Though we will limit this to the empires we trust - there is no point in making 'bad guy' empires stronger by giving them more habitable planets - that'd just cause trouble for us sooner or later.

If they want our help in making more habitable planets, they can shape up and be respectable.

Most will probably copy our method instead, when they eventually learn about it.

Nothing can be kept secret forever.

It's hard to believe nobody ever tried this before, given how valuable the result is.

Typical navy short-sightedness, I guess - they see Tugs as valuable naval units & so keep them ready to support military actions.

And only tugs have the raw oomph needed for this.

Anyway, we're happy about the prospects.

To protect our new planet, we're putting down defenses now - mines, both captor and explosive types, plus Defense Satelites, and Planetary Ground Defense Batteries both on the planet and on asteroids around the system.

It will also have remote sensors around the system, and just outside the dust cloud, so it will know if anything is coming.

When the comets are done hitting it is when we'll actually install those Planetary Ground Defense Batteries, plus some Habitation domes, and pods for mining and manufacturing, as well as ground bases for fighters and PF's.

We can't make it too tough to beat, but we can make it too tough to be worth beating.

Captain's Log, Stardate more Andromedans

So it's been a while since Admiral Connors has managed to bring any Andromedans to battle.

He's made them run away several times as they tried to set up for something, but for some reason they don't seem to want to fight him.

Anyway, they apparently finally got the setup they wanted, and attacked a major LDR planet.

This was unexpected, so First Fleet wasn't there.

So they sped to the site, and while on the way, they called ahead and got as much information about the Andromedan attack plan as possible.

Their attack was fairly straight forward - they would use Displacement Devices to hop in, shoot a few Defense Satellites or mines, then hop out again to get ready to repeat the process.

When they hopped out, they'd drain out the energy which their power absorber panels had soaked up from incoming fire. So when they hopped back in, they were as good as new and ready to fight some more.

So they were steadily chipping away at the planet's defenses.

But those defenses are more or less static - they don't change once the battle starts, so the Andromedans had become predictable in their attack runs.

And one thing you most definitely do not want to do when facing Admiral Connors is be predictable.

He made it look easy.

He arrived while cloaked, and positioned his ships. Then when the Andromedans hopped in and fired at some mines, he de-cloaked, attacked tractor beams, and captured them - all 6 support ships at once.

When he de-cloaked, the Andromedan Dominator Dreadnought displaced away, but given the locations of the planet, and uncleared minefields, there were only 4 places they could go.

Admiral Connors had ships waiting at each of those 4 places and took the Dreadnought too. We couldn't be exactly in the right spot in advance, but it was easy to be close enough so we could travel the remaining distance and dock before either his weapons or his Displacement Device recharged.

So now we have 7 more Andromedan ships we can't use: a Dominator class Dreadnought, 4 Cobra class Destroyers, and 2 Terminator class Maulers.

Except that maybe this will be the big break we've needed in studying Andromedan ships.

Their technology is so different from ours that nobody has ever made any progress in studying it. But this could be the crack we need to open things up.

See, In the Terminator class Mauler they combined our technology with theirs.

They reportedly saw a Romulan Mauler in action, realized it was a good fit with their Power Absorber panels, captured one, figured it out and built their Terminator class destroyer-sized Maulers from that.

So the hardest part has already been done by the Andromedans - they already figured out how to interface technology from our galaxy with technology from theirs.

And our WhizKids say that should give us all the start we'll need.

We'll see.

The captured ships are being hauled to Oz for investigation.

Either way, this was a big victory that could become a major breakthrough, so Bill Connors gets to be a Grand Admiral now too.

In other news, we've started trading in Klingon space, though very very carefully.

See, they have a lot of aggressive arrogant captains who have a good chance of going rogue and attacking, if it looks like a good idea to them at the time.

So we're working on making it look like a very bad idea.

The first trader to enter their territory was escorted by 3 warships, all cloaked. But the Battlecruiser we captured from the Lyrans would uncloak anytime any Klingon ship was sighted, just to let them know our ship was both escorted and that they couldn't be sure just how escorted it was.

Then sometimes, when more than one Klingon ship was sighted, one or the other of the 2 escorting Light Carriers would de-cloak.

Apparently, since we didn't get attacked, that was enough force, especially coupled with the uncertainly that there may be even more cloaked ships, to keep any Klingon captains from going rogue.

The extra cost of the escorts cut into our profits a bit, but we plan to keep on in a similar fashion until it becomes a widely known and accepted fact among the Klingons that our ships are escorted and you can never be sure just how strong that escort is.

Once that idea settles in, it will be our best protection against rogue captains attacking us.

We'll vary the types and numbers of escorts just to keep them guessing, and keep up the practice longer than we think necessary, just in case.

Captain's Log, Stardate, now we throw rocks.

So apparently the Lyrans are still feeling feisty. They raided a Hydran planet near their border and destroyed some defense installations and a large factory.

So, according to the Peace of Trader Joe's, we raided them back.

It seems they thought they were ready for that, but we have some really creative people working here.

So the base the Lyrans ran to, was covered by a very thick minefield, liberally seeded with captor mines.

Apparently they'd heard from the Klingons how effective that can be.

Well, as I mentioned, we did something creative.

We briefly took our 11 tugs off planet-moving detail and had them tow 11 large asteroids onto a collision course with that Lyran Battlestation.

The Tugs got those asteroids going as fast as they could, pulled a couple tricks I'll mention in a minute, then went back to towing the planet.

As an aside, I'll mention that this turned out to be a good test - the planet remained stable while the tugs were away.

Anyway, the first couple asteroids, being ship sized, set off some automatic mines, then set off some more, since the first explosions had not been enough to completely destroy them.

The next couple asteroids got shot by captor mines armed with Disruptors.

That is when most of our Second Fleet de-cloaked just beyond Phaser 4 range, and fired drones at the captor mines which had been revealed by firing.

Well, those drones got shot down by captor mines armed with Phaser 2's.

But we'd been expecting that and just fired more drones at all the captor mines we could see, including the Phaser mines that had just been revealed.

About this time the Lyrans decided that our asteroids were just there to detonate mines and get captor mines to reveal themselves, so they stopped shooting them and just used Tractor Beams from the base to halt them.

They could have pushed them so they'd miss the base and continue on, but if they deflected the asteroids like that, then those asteroids would have set off any automatic mines on the other side of the base.

The Lyrans didn't want the minefield weakened while our fleet was there, so they just halted the asteroids.

So we kept up our drone battle versus their captor mines, while more and more of those got revealed by shooting down drones.

And in the meantime asteroids kept piling up near their Battlestation.

The Lyrans only realized that the drone action versus their captor mines was a sideshow, when some of those asteroids exploded, taking out the base and the flotilla of heavy cruisers which were docked to it.

We could have stayed and swept the rest of the mines, but our point was made - raid us, and we'll raid you back more.

With what the recent war has cost them, it seems likely they will slow down for a while, or maybe even stop raiding for a while, so they can rebuild for another big new attack sometime.

Captain's Log, Stardate A new home

So, amid much cheering and celebrating, Oz arrived at her new home today - the place we've been calling Area 1, right by Switzerland, in the Hydran Neutral zone by the Lyrans and the LDR, not far from the Klingon border.

Arriving at almost the same time, elements of First Fleet towed the captured Andromedans to Oz for study.

The WhizKids quickly confirmed our hopes - the Mauler in their Terminator ships will be, what they called a Rosetta Stone - a key for deciphering everything.

The Andromedans indeed did the hard part already, of figuring out how to interface the different technologies used by our two galaxies.

And now we have a familiar well-understood thing (the Mauler) to use as a starting point & give us traction in figuring out their technology.

Since the Mauler ties to all their power systems, and those tie to everything else, we will be able to unravel it all over time.

But they warned us it could take years, and likely will.

So we made an offer, which was accepted very very rapidly, to the Hydrans and to the Federation.

The offer is they can send scientists to help work on figuring out the Andromedan ships, and to the degree they help, they can share in the resulting discoveries.

The first team of Hydrans is already here and the Federation are on the way.

The studies will be done on our terms, and at Oz, so we maintain control.

And we expect the two teams to balance each-other - if either team starts getting pressure from their government to steal more than their fair share, the self-interest of the other government should counterbalance that.

And as an extra bonus, both governments now have an incentive to protect us from anybody else - if someone else should raid us successfully, then the Hydrans and Federation would likely lose access, and miss out on the technological boon that will eventually be realized when we discover how the Andromedan technology works.

Even if they don't protect us, their mere presence offers some implicit protection - if anybody attacks us, they will risk hurting Federation and Hydran personnel, possibly bringing retaliation from them.

Not that we intend to depend on that - as usual, we're doing everything we can to make our base way too tough to be worth attacking. It's all the usual stuff - explosive mines, captor mines, Defense Satellites, Planetary defense batteries on nearby asteroids, plenty of fighters and PF's and so on.

We also like having a couple Mobile Bases set up next to us and in use.

They not only provide extra trading capacity, they also significantly complicate any enemy's problems in how to attack us successfully.

We like that a lot.

When the tugs get time, we will still move a couple new Mobile Bases to other sites we've been looking at in neutral zones where we have trade, then upgrade them to Battlestations if the local trade warrants it.

In the meantime, these two Mobile Bases, which we've named Neverland and Wonderland, are staying right here.

And the Sightseers Club has expanded quickly, as other Habitation Spheres and similar places have decided that a mutual association sounds like a good idea to them.

We will be contracting with them to provide protection, and also to represent them when they need to interact with the various empires.

And several minor planets, independent mining operations, and similar have asked to join. Though since they are not Sightseeing, we're calling them the Trader Joe's Association for now.

All of them want independence, but they also need trade and protection.

We will be sort of welding them together, though loosely.

Well, that potentially gives us the resources of a real nation, if needed.

There's a large population, mining, manufacturing etc base there. And while tapping that inappropriately would make it evaporate, the potential to tap it if attacked will make just about anyone think twice about attacking us.

Well, that plus the reputation our fleets have earned, which is significant.

When the Romulans first drove us out of their Neutral Zone, and for a good while thereafter, I feared that Trader Joe's would wither and die as a company.

But we managed to find new and different ways to make money, and eventually started prospering and growing again, even while Oz was still on the move and unable to do it's original kinds of business.

Now that we've settled Oz in a new spot and our original kinds of business are starting up again, the future looks really bright

I'll close this Log there, unless anything really unusual comes up.

end

notes:

If you liked this story, be advised I'm working on another, based on the original BattleStar Galactica tv show from 1978.

I'm going to call it BattleStar Galactica Unchained and post it on this site, probably about July 2017, maybe earlier if all goes well.

And I've previously written a novel (Titled the War of the Tree) and self-published it on the amazon and lulu websites.

If you're interested in that, browse to amazon and look for item number B0071TJO2I (the kindle edition) or 1469988755 (paperback), or to lulu and search for item number 18848789.

I know my writing style has quirks and is not the standard approach, nor is it going to appeal to everyone (not by a long shot). That's fine. But it is consistent. If you've read this far, I expect you will enjoy the others.

Thanks for listening.


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